I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.

I didn't mean to spend my life writing American history, which should have been taught in the schools, but I saw no alternative but to taking it on myself. I could think of a lot of cheerier things I'd rather be doing than analyzing George Washington and Aaron Burr. But it came to pass, that was my job, so I did it.

I was raised in the Washington household of my grandfather Senator Thomas P. Gore of Oklahoma, and have known politicians intimately all my life.

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at the galaxy's edge... there is all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. No thing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

Sometimes the grass really IS greener on the other side and you're happier, until you step in shit and realize the cows are all the same.

I'm a fervent foe of water pollution, whether it is our own Hudson River or Philadelphia's tap water.