I think I'm a combination of very simple pleasures and the fact I've read a lot of books. I don't think it's a binary opposition across the board in humans and I think I'm an example that it's not. I'm hosting gay marriage rallies and I have tons of guns at home. There's a lot of middle ground in the world and I'm one of those people.

You either love or you hate. You live in the middle you get nothing.

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young the habituation of the middle-aged and the mutual dependence of the old.

We're involved right now in some very significant legal battles and it would be the wrong thing for me to do to step out in the middle of those battles.

Once the attacks occur as we learned on Sept. 11 it is too late. It makes little sense to deprive ourselves of an important and legal means to detect and prevent terrorist attacks while we are still in the middle of a fight to the death with al Qaeda.

There's a very big gulf between the black civil rights leadership in America and the black middle class in America. The black middle class are conservative. Many of those minorities can be persuaded to be members of the Republican Party.

The war and terrorism in the Middle East the crisis of leadership in many of the oil-supply countries in the developing world the crisis of global warming - all these are very clearly tied to energy.

Bipartisanship isn't an option anymore it is a requirement. The American people have divided responsibility for leadership right down the middle.

Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That's not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That's not leadership. That's abandoning our middle class.

We're going to need to absorb some pain. The Republicans want to pile all the pain on people who can least afford it and the middle class and Democrats under his leadership want to make sure that we can address deficit reduction and continue to make investments and shared sacrifice is going to be imperative in order to be able to do that.

It's really necessary for the United States to continue to give strong leadership to the Middle East peace process supported by European countries at the same time.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

I was brought up in a very open rural countryside in the middle of nowhere. There were no cell phones. If your lights went out you were lit by candlelight for a good four days before they can get to you. And so my imagination was crazy.

In fact it works the other way: A government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it.

I hope that none of the countries in the Middle East are planning anything but the peaceful utilization of nuclear energy.

For all their current prestige Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.

The Middle East is hopeful. There's hope there.