I met my wife Anne who was a sociology student and her influence together with activities associated with the student movement of the time opened up my interests amongst other things into the theatre art music politics and philosophy.

When I first started working in politics as a junior aide on Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign it never occurred to me that I would one day work in the White House. There were plenty of women among the volunteers who stuffed envelopes and walked precincts. But there were fewer and fewer on each successive level of influence and access.

So poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms.

Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

France is not poetic she even feels in fact a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.

The United States contributes to peace in both by serving as a buffer between and among regional powers that while not preparing for armed conflict do not fully trust one another.

Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism.

Class struggle: external peace international solidarity peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations.

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

Without free self-respecting and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace that is peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state there can be no guarantee of external peace.

I think peace should be done not only among governments but among people. It was impossible before the Facebook.

In my opinion if we have not achieved peace it is because people forget its most fundamental aspect. Before we talk about peace among nations we must settle our peace with God.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.