In America Nothing Dies Easier Than Tradition.

Though Americans Talk A Good Deal About The Virtue Of Being Serious, They Generally Prefer People Who Are Solemn Over People Who Are Serious. In Politics, The Rare Candidate Who Is Serious, Like Adlai Stevenson, Is Easily Overwhelmed By One Who Is Solemn, Like General Eisenhower. This Is Probably Because It Is Hard For Most People To Recognize Seriousness, Which Is Rare, Especially In Politics, But Comfortable To Endorse Solemnity, Which Is As Commonplace As Jogging.

What [man Landing On The Moon] Is Doing Up There Is Indulging His Obsession With The Impossible. The Impossible Infuriates And Tantalizes Him. Show Him An Impossible Job And He Will Reduce It To A Possibility So Trite That Eventually It Bores Him.

Strategic Thinkers Were Naturally Rattled To Find This Outsider Fooling Around With Their Work. They Had Been Thinking Strategically When Reagan Was Just Another Movie Actor Playing Opposite A Chimpanzee, For Heaven's Sake. They Think Reagan Is Too Naive, Too Innocent, To Grasp The Intellectual Complexities Of Cold War Strategy.

I Am Sitting Here 93 Million Miles From The Sun On A Rounded Rock Which Is Spinning At The Rate Of 1000 Miles An Hour... And My Head Pointing Down Into Space With Nothing Between Me And Infinity But Something Called Gravity Which I Can't Even Understand, And Which You Can't Even Buy Any Place So As To Have Some Stored Away For A Gravityless Day.

The Biographer's Problem Is That He Never Knows Enough. The Autobiographer's Problem Is That He Knows Too Much.