I would say I'm a 19th-century liberal, possibly even an 18th-century one.

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.

Members of Congress are like the voters in one respect -- they want to go with the winners.

I'm a tundra with wind endlessly blowing a hollow tunnel through me.

One smile heals the planet because it spreads like a virus from one to the next without care for the perfect environment.

She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

I don't like the idea that the government has so much of a say in things.

Think, in mounting higher, the angels would press on us, and aspire to drop some golden orb of perfect song into our deep, dear silence.

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

A man's name, title, and rank are artificial and impermanent; they do nothing to reveal what he really is, even to himself.

We must combine the toughness of the serpent with the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Our Founders always wondered about how long it would last. The price of liberty is everlasting vigilance. You've got to be on your guard every minute or you will lose it.