The nature of catastrophe is after all reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins destroys wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

Written poetry is worth reading once and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others.

I'm sorry man but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time - and this includes naps - I'm an F-18 bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground.

Put a bridle on thy tongue set a guard before thy lips lest the words of thine own mouth destroy thy peace... on much speaking cometh repentance but in silence is safety.

When I was in the White House I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30 000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

I plead for conservation of human culture which is much more fragile than nature herself. We needn't destroy other cultures with the force of our own.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.