Replacing “progress” with “innovation” skirts the question of whether a novelty is an improvement: the world may not be getting better and better but our devices are getting newer and newer.

When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood NOT as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible.

The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesnt enter into it.

History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

Why do beautiful women love ugly men?

Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.

Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world.

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; thats what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.

If the final chapter of your life story is written by love, you are guaranteed a happy ending.

He better call Becky with the good hair.

On angel's wings, love flew in.

I didn’t know who I was or who I wanted to be until you stumbled into my life. I refuse to let you go.

What do you have (talents, idea, contacts, a voice, strength)? God uses what you have to give you what you don't have.

If the government regulates against use of drones or stem cells or artificial intelligence, all that means is that the work and the research leave the borders of that country and go someplace else.

If the double helix was so important, how come you didn't work on It? Ther husband, Linus Pauling, when the Nobel Prize was awarded to Crick, Watson and Wilkins.

Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent.

All the different styles I've played have really helped me as a guitarist and helped me develop my own way of playing.

Yinzer: DAMN!! I wish I had your balls! Tucker:"I wish you had a breath mint, but I guess we don't always get what we wish for.