Hindsight is not necessarily the best guide to understanding what really happened. The past is often as distorted by hindsight as it is clarified by it.

The brief legal emancipation of Jews during the Napoleonic wars released unparalleled economic, professional, and cultural energies. It was though a high dam had suddenly been breached.

Jerusalem has been - and for many, still is - a metaphor for destruction and the vengeance of an offended God. She is the city where believers have killed unbelievers to give life to faith.

The level of success you experience externally is a reflection of your level of personal development internally.

Give a man a finger, he’ll put a wedding ring on it!

It is usually people in the money business, finance, and international trade that are really rich.

I've got a history of frustrating guys and making them angry.

It's wrong to discriminate based on skin color when there are so many other reasons not to like someone.

Worn out places, worn out faces.

Automating a mess yields an automated mess.

I think I have learned to really get out of the mathematical side of myself that looks at story and story structure and go with, "Okay, well, what would people do in real life?"

Our democratic societies are in danger. In allowing ourselves to be infiltrated by fear, to be blinded by the passion of identity, we are entertaining the most serious illusions about our freedom.

I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime.