A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

To make a living space, there first had to be a killing space.

All empires have depended on local legitimacy and local collaboration; they are not based primarily on coercion. An imperial rule that relies wholly on coercion can't endure. It's too expensive.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations.

If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.

Anything is possible. Dream! Reach out! Achieve!

Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left? You have stripped me even of my past, even of the things we never shared.

A breath?" she asked. She didn't want to kiss just any wooden man. He looked nice enough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed very forward. He might remember it, and make assumptions.

I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of "The Look."

The media, folks, is no good. They're no good - very dishonest.

Isn't allowing people a choice what America is all about?

Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

As a chess player one has to be able to control one's feelings, one has to be as cold as a machine.

Every king sleeps, but not every king wakes up as king! The snakes of the intrigue crawl around during the night! The cleverest king is the least sleeping king!

If you don't laugh at all, you've missed the point. If you only laugh, you've missed your chance from illumination.