"It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011."

"What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this year. You can never bail someone out of trouble without putting someone else into trouble."

"Difference of religion breeds more quarrels than difference of politics."

"Newt Gingrich is one of the brightest people in the Republican Party and he's always been a little unorthodox in his approach to politics, but that's what makes him Newt Gingrich."

"It is a sound principle of finance, and a still sounder principle of government, that those who have the duty of expending the revenue of a country should also be saddled with the responsibility of levying and providing it."

"Wisdom is the quiet art of recognizing what can be changed and releasing what cannot. For where clarity resides, peace inevitably follows — an essential principle for the reflective life."