My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news any time soon and an obvious exit strategy is not apparent to me.

If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.

I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

I don't accept the argument of people like David Horowitz that the government should impose some sort of predetermined political balance on academic research.

It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship.

Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.

I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates.

An occupying power has no right to make significant alterations in the character of the occupied society, to change the laws all around, without a strong security reason and so forth.

Live can only be fully lived by faith in the spirit of love.

There is an abandonment, an escape, that physical labor bestows.

In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.

I would rather be free in my mind, and be locked up in a prison cell, than to be a coward and not be able to say what I want.

I caught my wife in bed with another man and I was crushed. So I said, "Get off of me, you two!"

Be living witnesses of the greatness and beauty of Christianity.

The one thing about being on 'ER' that has changed is that I'm more easily recognizable.

“No thought lives in your head rent-free.” Each thought you have will either be an investment or a cost.

A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.

The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burnt on the water.