Nations don't start out. There is not a particular moment when they unveil the essence of themselves. They are always a work in progress.

Even for the most excitable preacher, there was nothing inherently sinful about a waffle.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

Charlie Hebdo: Satire was the father of true political freedom, born in the 18th century; the scourge of bigots and tyrants. Sing its praises.

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.

Irreverence is the lifeblood of freedom.

What can art really do in the face of atrocity?

The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

There are some places where history just grabs you by the jugular. This is one of them.

But it struck me that the extreme violence and cruelty of the English Civil War had gone understated.

I actually think that history has fed off the restlessness of cyber space, of kind of the frantic, segmented nature of the way we lead our lives. People want to be connected.

When we think of success, we often associate those who are successful with the things they do rather than the things they don’t, and focus is found in the latter.

Enthusiasm is the elixir of life.

Of all the home remedies, a good wife is best.

Strange how blind people are! They are horrified by the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, but their arsenals fill them with pride!

It was so easy living day by day Out of touch with the rhythm and blues But now I need a little give and take The New York Times, The Daily News.

Jurisdiction is not given for the sake of the judge, but for that of the litigant.

Somebody's little girl- how easy it is to make a sob story over who she once was and who she now is.

I maintain, then, that we should make peace, not only with the Chians, the Rhodians, the Byzantines and the Coans, but with all mankind.

The point is to make the pie grow faster and distribute the new growth more equitably.

Most people might just as well buy a share of the whole market, which pools all the information, than delude themselves into thinking they know something the market doesn't.