In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier Christmas Day of 1982 just after I had been first elected to a full term that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won if only the men had voted.

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

Analysts may be correct that the presidential election won't primarily turn on entitlements reform but by choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate Mitt Romney can contrary to conventional wisdom make it a winning issue and lay the foundation for a reform mandate when he wins.

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

People never lie so much as after a hunt during a war or before an election.

You'd think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three.

As recent as the year 2000 we won elections by saying we shouldn't be the policemen of the world and that we should not be nation building. And its time we got those values back into this country.

As societies grow decadent the language grows decadent too. Words are used to disguise not to illuminate action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.

Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection tribe competing against tribe and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness of virtue and sin among the members of a society.

It was a shock to people of the nineteenth century when they discovered from observations science had made that many features of the biological world could be ascribed to the elegant principle of natural selection.

It is a shock to us in the twentieth century to discover from observations science has made that the fundamental mechanisms of life cannot be ascribed to natural selection and therefore were designed. But we must deal with our shock as best we can and go on.

Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 elections would have earned their adherents a well-deserved F in any freshman economics (or earth science) class.

I bought a selection of short romantic fiction novels studied them decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.

The language of America changed with the election of Bill Clinton because with all due respect to my friends on the Republican side Bill Clinton is the best communicator of the last 50 years. He felt your pain.

Religion for better or for worse has been politicized in blatant ways that have seldom been equaled in American elections.

We sincerely ask the Beijing authorities across the Strait to view the election result from a positive perspective to accept the democratic decision of the Taiwanese people.

There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was 'Well I hope so.'

I think that what I'm doing is right. And election-year politics which intensifies everything is not going to drive me off that course.

My first meeting as a senator my first day they were already talking about the next election. Part of that's the permanent campaign part of that's a word I've been using more frequently 'tribal.' Our politics has become tribal: It's us versus them.

But being in the closet uniquely assisted me in politics. From my first run for the state legislature until my election as governor all too often I was not leading but following my best guess at public opinion.