Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.

I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.

Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.

Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.

If you believe your catcher is intelligent and you know that he has considerable experience, it is a good thing to leave the game almost entirely in his hands.

The illusion of selfhood, ego, a separate identity is false.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations. It is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs. It is necessary that we examine them.

I think being a producer makes you a problem solver, so you kind of go, "Well there's a problem. What do we do? How do we solve it?"

Saying hello to something new means saying good-bye to something old and loved.

We develop our beautiful planet in such a way that we brush aside the species... we risk creating a wasteland, where our aspirations will ultimately wither and die

Delight and liberty, the simple creed of childhood.

In the water bucket a melon and an eggplant nodding to each other