In the 2000 election, George W. Bush, who had shirked military service, succeeded in presenting himself as more reliable on national security than Al Gore.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid.

Success is not about who never fails. It is about who can spring - or even stagger - back up.

Violence against women isn't cultural, it's criminal. Equality cannot come eventually, it's something we must fight for now.

Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter.

My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

I like to think that as I get older I'm getting better at spending time with people who have qualities that make them worth spending time with.

Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere.

Have you never been so heartbreakingly lonely that you felt as though you would go mad?”- Darcia Moon, Gravitation, Book One: Beyond the Pale

We can compare a life without a goal to an equestrian on an obstinate horse: much movement but little headway

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

but, he also said it because part of him wanted more of her, this cold woman who was not exactly cold, this rock who was not stone.

Sherlock [Holmes] is on the side of the angels, but don't think he's one of them. He uses similar means, but it seems to be for a better purpose, one would hope.

Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced.

Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.

One of the agonies of being an author is to know when to stop writing.

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

I like working intensely, then going away and thinking about it, working out why it didn't work and then coming back to it. It makes the work richer, I think.