Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

That is what leadership is all about: staking your ground ahead of where opinion is and convincing people, not simply following the popular opinion of the moment.

As a historian, what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

Go ahead, and fear not. You will have a full library at your service.

Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.

I still think about that one Jamiroquai video a lot.

Excitement about things became a habit, a part of my personality, and the expectation that I should enjoy new experiences often engendered the enjoyment itself.

Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.

When quitting is done correctly, it isn't giving up - it's making room for something better.

Give me a strong back, over a soft heart.

Habits are the determinant of who will be rich or be poor.

Churchill was one of the few men I have met who even in the flesh give me the impression of genius. George Bernard Shaw is another. It is amusing to know that each thinks the other is overrated.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

The world of education is like an island where people cut off from the world are prepared for life by exclusion from it.

I have so many things that I say to my kids, I just drive them crazy.

To avoid being sexist and racist, we should assume that half the perpetrators of violent crimes are white, liberal women.

Winning the IBF title was the greatest night of my life. To give it up outside the ring is truly painful.

Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth until we experience it ourselves.