All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

I teach one semester a year and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws not of men.

You have citizens who don't understand how government works and they're kind of soured on it. All they do is criticize. They have no idea that they can make things happen.

Government works less efficiently when it begins to grow out of control and takes on more and more of the responsibilities that belong to the citizens.

Government workers often get a bad rap but it's rare for them to receive much appreciation when government works.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.

Our nation is too different too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work.