Jonathan had been around Washington long enough to know that no offer was exactly what it seemed.

— Stephen L. Carter

On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

— Stephen L. Carter

Our sense of history has grown dangerously thin, and our sense of proportion with it.

— Stephen L. Carter

People seem to remember the sacrifices they made more than what the sacrifices were for.

— Stephen L. Carter

She had been carried away by the need to defend herself.

— Stephen L. Carter

She wasn't being methodological. She was being autobiographical.

— Stephen L. Carter

Size and elaboration were often mistaken for importance.

— Stephen L. Carter

So many people of liberal persuasion value their own progressive opinions more than they value the people they hold those opinions about.

— Stephen L. Carter

The kind of people we have in Washington only trust what they think they own.

— Stephen L. Carter

The only way to prove his willingness to wait would be to wait.

— Stephen L. Carter