It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly. - Tom Clancy

There's two kinds of people in the world, the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves.

Back then "cruel and unusual punishment" meant the rack and burning at the stake — both of those things that had been used in pre-Revolutionary America — but in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.

The mark of a good officer, Wegener repeatedly told his youngsters, was willingness to admit he had something yet to learn.