Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.

Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history.

The principle that human nature in its psychological aspects is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history since its statements are rather of the nature of universals whereas those of history are singulars.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

I think that some of our soldiers die in the battlefield and some come home to bad health and die prematurely just by the nature of the kind of business they're in.

The American economy has always been driven by the entrepreneurial nature of its citizens and blocking access to affordable health care will only suffocate growth within the small business sector of our economy.

I don't know why my smile has become a signature pose. I think it's a nice change. I think people want to see happiness so a smile is what can bring that. I didn't make it my trademark on purpose.