"Richard Nixon was protected from impeachment, so long as Spiro Agnew was Vice President and would assume the presidency in Nixon’s place. Half of Washington knew that Agnew was a crook, and a boneheaded one at that. They had to get rid of Agnew before they could really go after Nixon."

"The important question wasn’t whether or not you thought you were the right one to lead. It was whether others believed you were."

"You pursue progress, even if you suspect that it is an illusion."

"His sin was something that scientists had done for thousands of years. Scientists didn’t usually change data, not unless they were outright charlatans. But when facts didn’t agree with theory, there was an awful temptation to find reasons for rejecting the offending data and and hanging on to the theory. Ptolemy had done it. Newton had done it. Darwin had done it. Einstein had done so explicitly."

"It is one of the unfortunate aspects of the legal profession that excess carries no penalty. There is never, for a lawyer, such a thing as too much."

"As the poet laureate of all confidence tricksters and treasure-seekers puts it, we were “given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie.”"

"The same thing happens to every President. People tell a chief executive what they think he wants to hear. Rosy economic reports, high popularity figures, promising international changes, you name it. There’s a competition to be the first with good news. Anyone who tells bad news tends to get weeded out—even if all the real news is bad."

"The lead prosecutor told the jury at my trial that I was “A sick parasite, preying on society.” Parasite on society; this, mind you, from a lawyer."

"It was the age-old conundrum: How do I know that the ‘me’ who wakes after a night’s sleep is the same ‘me’ who went to bed? I don’t. I merely employ it as a working assumption, for lack of anything better."

"If deadly violence were to be committed, he was like me. He would think it better to give than to receive."

"Humans were inexplicable only if you assumed that they were logical."

"A thousand friends have less weight than a single enemy."

"Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor’s eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D."

"Decisions based on incomplete information are one thing, a fact of political life. Decisions made with no information are another."

"I’ll say only this: if we’re going to throw the idea of the Big Bang overboard, we won’t have much left of current astrophysics and cosmology."

"Data are not the same as information. Before you can get the answers you want, you have to ask the right question."

"When hard times come to the party, dignity is one of the first guests to leave."

"“Any other instructions?” “Not without breaking one of my own golden rules. In an unpredictable situation, the man or woman on the spot should make the decisions, not the general sitting on his ass a million miles away from the action.”"

"It had been designed for “peacekeeping,” which meant that it had been fitted out from stem to stern with the most hideous weapons of war that the human mind could conceive."

"Only the final choice would require a human decision: enter the Link, or decline to do so? It occurred to Chan that perhaps this was the choice that humans were least qualified to make. He recognized in himself the tendency to say, we’ve come so far, we can’t possibly change our minds now. People following that philosophy died climbing mountains, they signed disastrous contracts, they flew into hurricanes, and they embarked on lifelong commitments to the wrong mates. Perhaps they headed to the stars for the same reason."

"I learned a long time ago that it’s a bad habit to waste effort counting your friends. It’s your enemies you need to look out for."

"In the old words of wisdom, you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, and that’s usually enough to get by."

"I find that prayers don’t work when you need them most. Unless you answer them for yourself."

"It was the classic question; you had two tasks to perform and one promised to be much harder and more unpleasant than the other. Did you tackle the tough one first and get it out of the way? Or did you postpone, and hope that before you came to the hard part you might be struck by a meteorite, or that a solar flare would wipe out life in the solar system?"

"Although the schoolchildren of this country emerge from our institutions of supposed learning ninety percent illiterate, knowing nothing of science, nothing of technology, little geography, and less history, every one of them will tell you who rules the country. We are governed by the interaction of a President, learned judges, and our people’s representatives. Every child knows this; and every child is wrong. Perhaps it was once that way, but today the Court and President and Congress are either members of the old and wealthiest families, like the Michelsons and Brooks; or they have been bought and controlled by them. The sprawl of government passes and implements policies. But far fewer people, about a hundred in number, set policies."

"Don’t get caught again. Never, never, never. That was the Golden Rule, the only important rule."

"Who should run the world? There’s no easy answer, no magic solution. There never is, to a really hard question."

"In any civilized society, it is the individual or group who creates a problem that must have responsibility for solving it."

"“He was acquitted; he must have been.” “Right. Good lawyer, tainted evidence. But that doesn’t mean he was innocent.”"

"We both know that actions taken from internal conviction are far better motivated than any external commands."

"Intelligence is too subtle an attribute to be inferred from appearance."

"It was improbable for him to meet his old friends here? Fine, so it was improbable; but it had happened. “Improbable” was something you could only apply to future events."

"Somehow he felt more resigned than surprised. Things had been going far too well for far too long. Just when you thought you had the universe by the tail, it turned round and bit you on the ass."

"When you have something to do, do it. When you have nothing to do, sleep."

"If you wanted to get yourself killed, there was no better way than to think you knew all the tricks. It took experience to make you realize that the universe could always pull another one out of the bag and throw it at you."

"His mind was as furiously active as his hormones."

"Happy endings were for children’s stories and fool. You live in misery, and then you die. Life, by definition, was not designed to end happily. Louis continued aft. No happy ending, then. That was a fact, certain as death itself. He was living at the moment in a dream, an imagined world where everything went right. But—dreams are real while they last. Could you say more of life? A dream sequence was no more than a happy interlude, but maybe a happy interlude could last for an awful long time."

"The bad thing about being a world-class worrier was that being right was worse than being wrong."

"Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death."

"When you had little or no information, it was unreasonable to have any expectations. But somehow you did, even if they were often wrong."

"Arabella Lund had been full of “rules,” and one of her most basic was this: Anything in the universe can happen once, or at least it can seem to happen. If you want to obtain information, make it happen again."

"“That’s a whole lot of ifs you got there.” “True. But which would you prefer, Louis Nenda?” Atvar H’sial rose from her crouched position. “A substantial set of contingent possibilities, or a single unpleasant certainty?”"

"Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue."

"Sometimes I think about dying. And then I wonder about going to hell. And then I think that if and when I go there, the place will be completely organized and run by lost souls, with a council and a works committee and an ethics panel, and I’ll feel right at home."

"He was a professional trouble-shooter. That was a fancy name for an idiot."

"As you will one day discover, a leader is not a leader because of the way that he or she behaves. He is a leader only because of the way that he is treated by others."

"He had written the man off completely, and now here came common sense and a talent for improvisation. Maybe you didn’t have to be an idiot just because you were rich."

"Korin stared. It must be a novelty, finding someone more paranoid than he was."

"The answers come pat and fast. You see, what the downsiders want isn’t an explanation; it’s a catchphrase they can use instead of an explanation."

"Darya found the logic of her thought processes so compelling that it never occurred to her that others might have a different reaction. But they did."