The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
I'm not serving in the same party as Boris Johnson. He's proved that he's incapable of holding high office, never mind being prime minister. He's not true to what he believes in.
The age of national leaders, or candidates for high office, has never been automatically regarded as an issue for concern.
You have had indeed a fair trial. It is a shocking thing when a judge of your high office is shown to have betrayed the truth and his honor, and I sentence you to the penitentiary.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.
Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
I get standing ovations at meetings when I say Britain should be involved in human spaceflight. Unfortunately, that goal has been blocked by a handful of people in high office.
High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.
Perhaps life is actually more confusing and unknowable to an adult than a child, but grown-ups have learned to deceive themselves and act as if they understand what's going on; and some are elected to high office on the basis of their ability to create this impression.
There is no easy way to ask serious-minded men and women who hold high office, and who have matters of state on their mind, 'Do you mind if I take a quick selfie?'
