No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.

Racial prejudice boils down to the deeply anti-American message that some people are born to fail.

I am explicitly not opening the giant can of worms that is the ongoing current discussion of patent, copyright, and trademark reform.

According to the Office of Technology Assessment, 3 Minuteman missiles and 7 Poseidon missiles could destroy 73 percent of oil-refining capacity in the Soviet Union.

The worst kind of management seeks a single optimum, a one-scale index of efficiency, like the mindless scales of 1 to 10 for grading a woman's beauty or one to four stars for a movie's appeal.

Up or out" greatly magnified the careerist emphasis on holding a position rather than doing a job.

The hoary joke in the literary world, based on 'Dreams From My Father,' was that if things had worked out differently for Barack Obama, he could have made it as a writer.

A basic rule of life for reporters is that you should spend your time talking with and learning about people who are not sending you press releases, rather than those who are.

There's no longer any surprise in noting that China has grave environmental problems.

Environmental disaster is the gravest threat to China's continued development. That's according to me, but it is not some wacko view.

You will hear words old and spent and useless like costumes left over from yesterday's parties.

Terms like 'good' and 'bad' are extremely simplistic in what is a far more complex situation.

The greater the scientific advance, the more primitive the fear.

Among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism.

When I was a child, I wanted to be an actor, but I had really bad buck teeth. I didn't want to get braces, but my mom said I couldn't be an actor if I didn't get the braces. So, I got the braces.

He makes a solitude, and calls it - peace!

Less money for public media means less access to the arts.

Zen martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either.

Be Brave in the pursuit of beauty

You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?