The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.

A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.

Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.

Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing; the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.

To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'

It's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root; F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.

President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.

Never assume the obvious is true.

When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.

A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.

Senators John Kerry and John Edwards have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.

As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.

If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.

I think we all have a need to know what we do not need to know.

The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment -- they're stuck with you for a long time.

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'

On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.

Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.