“Politicians only get to the top because they have no qualifications to detain them at the bottom.”

Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: Western religions, all the leading religions, have this schizotypalism shot through them from top to bottom. It's that same exact principle: it's great having one of these guys, but we sure wouldn't want to have three of them in our tribe. Overdo it, and our schizotypalism in the Western religious setting is what we call a "cult," and there you are in the realm of a Charles Manson or a David Koresh or a Jim Jones. You can only do post-hoc forensic psychiatry on Koresh and Jones, but Charles Manson is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. But get it just right, and people are gonna get the day off from work on your birthday for millennia to come. [laughter] This is great! I think this is the first time I've ever said that line without somebody getting up and leaving in a huff from the audience. It's very nice being here.

Angella Johnson's obituary to Linda, pages 38–39 of The Mail on Sunday, 5th March 2006.

Source: Retrospectives : The Early Years in Computer Graphics at at MIT, Lincoln Lab and Harvard (1989), p. 25.

All Things Change, but Jesus Never

On the Chinese Communist Party case against him http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-31018617 (24 July 2012)

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: People are always shocked when they ask me what I plan to do about crime as governor and my answer comes back as "Nothing!" Does the issue of crime need to be addressed? You bet it does. But, just as with many other social issues, I don't think that legislation is the most effective arena in which to fight crime. We already have tons of laws on the books. Most of those laws would work more effectively if we just enforced them better.
As governor, there isn't a lot I can do beyond that to crack down on crime. Law enforcement is really a local issue. It's the cops' job to tighten down on criminals.
Politicians always like to say "I'm gonna fight crime!" because it makes them sound great and gets them votes. But what can a politician do to fight crime?

The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Broadcast (21 March 1943), quoted in The Times (22 March 1943), p. 6

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)
Context: The people at the bottom do not have the larger, global view, but at the top they do not have the local view of all the details, many of which can often be very important, so either extreme gets poor results.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 230.