One of the hardest things in politics is to convince people to do things now that will have a good effect 20 or 30 years from now because politicians tend to have a short-term view. They are more attentive to things that people care about today.
That's been lost. It's a huge problem. What you have is you have the major institutions of the world all wanting to deleverage. They want to take down their assets and liabilities. What seemed so easy to borrow against a year ago now looks like rat poison to them. So they're trying to deleverage. There is only one institution in the world that can leverage up in a way that's all a countervailing force to that, and that's the United States Treasury.
You have noticed that the human being is a curiosity. In times past he has had (and worn out and flung away) hundreds and hundreds of religions; today he has hundreds and hundreds of religions, and launches not fewer than three new ones every year. I could enlarge on that number and still be within the facts.
We need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We need not choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe.
If you want your business to survive for 100 years, you've got to make it through every single day for 100 years. It's not enough to do it 99.9% of the time.
When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be an architect, because when I was 12 years old I had a guidance counselor that convinced me that that was the best career choice for me.
God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we - we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
There have been times where, let's say on LGBT issues, when we were trying to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and I got the Pentagon and Bob Gates, a Republican holdover from the [George W.] Bush administration, to authorize a study of how you might end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, headed up by Jeh Johnson, who at that time was a council to the Justice Department. And it was going to take a year to conduct that study, issue a report, and figure out how it might be implemented, what effect it would have on unit cohesion and military effectiveness.
I'm not able to go in with an act that I use month to month year to year all the time. It's constantly evolving and changing and that keeps me on my toes but certainly adds to the challenge.
Xenophanes states that the fire in Lipara once failed for sixteen years, but returned in the seventeenth year. They say that the lava-stream in Etna is neither flaming nor continuous, but returns only after an interval of many years.
Mr. Cruncher... always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.
A year ago, my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the supreme court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone. Ah, those were the good old days.