His transparent plastic iMac, the neat iPod, the iBook, the G4 Cube and the Titanium PowerBook are icons. They single-handedly remind us of the power of elegant, emotional design.

Friends say the roots of his success lie in his lateral thinking -- finding the true appeal of an object, often ignoring the traditional approach to design.

The iPod is like a cigarette pack for those addicted to music instead of tobacco.

Islamic militants in Saudi Arabia with links to Al Qaeda appear to be making a concerted new effort to destabilize the Saudi government by assassinating top security officials.

"The Saudis have done a good job ... but they continue to be very dangerous."

"It's what we don't know that worries us."

... "People often focus on facilities and weapons, but an equal threat is the nature of these scientists, and what their connections are, and how well they are screened and monitored."

For the United Nations, the death of Sergio Vieira de Mello was a crippling blow, comparable in its effect on the UN's sense of its own possibility to the impact President Kennedy's murder had on the self-confidence of the United States.

He could transform hopeless situations into hopeful ones and negotiate cease-fires at the height of genocidal wars.

He must have known that he was faced with making the best of a bad job. And yet he had been in bad situations before and succeeded.

Walter Pforzheimer helped draft the legislation that created the CIA and built the world's greatest collection of intelligence literature in English.

Nothing was closer to his heart than a George Washington letter from 1777 in which he wrote, "The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged. All that remains for me to add is that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible, for upon secrecy success depends in most enterprises of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favorable issue."

It was his practice to buy two copies of a book whenever he could -- one for the agency, and one for his own collection.

Repeat transactions are not necessarily the rule in today's global economy.

Indirect reputation systems, where buyers base their decisions on a seller's previous interactions with other buyers, are a potential substitute for personal interactions -- provided such information is available.

Americans are hearing plenty about America's war of choice in Iraq but almost nothing about the war that ... might actually have done something to arrest the threat of terrorism.

The news is not good.

George Soros wonders why Americans got quite so upset about September 11.

He seems positively obsessed with the Project for a New American Century.

In his book, he veers close to what has become the left's equivalent of black-helicopter paranoia.

The world's largest electronics, computer and entertainment companies are embroiled in a multibillion-dollar fight over whose technology will become an industry standard.

... an effort by [Japanese, Korean, and European] electronics makers to prevent emerging Chinese rivals from making inroads ...

"This is a very intense conflict over intellectual property ..."