A bluff taken seriously is more useful than a serious threat interpreted as a bluff.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people, they think it's their fault.

University politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

You must be very subtle. ... You have to treat a highly intelligent man as a highly intelligent man. You must make him immediately aware that you are taking him very seriously. And you must enhance his confidence. Flattery is simply to make a man believe he can solve his problems.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Now when I bore people at a party they think it's their fault.

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

If it's going to come out eventually, better it come out immediately.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Now when I bore people at a party they think it's their fault.