The idea of innovation is the idea of progress stripped of the aspirations of the Enlightenment, scrubbed clean of the horrors of the twentieth century, and relieved of its critics.

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.

Love is something you must accept in order to have, Naomi.

Life is like a bud, it always dreams to bloom like a flower.

Some wear greed as a fine suit of clothes. But you, my son, bear its stamp ever more poorly.

One can pass on responsibility, but not the discretion that goes with it.

A nation without means of reform is without means of survival.

My parents were hugely supportive like that. I was always the best - it's so embarrassing, isn't it? I was always the best at everything.

It was an hour of sanity with the good guys winning, a situation where the world was right side up.

I also acknowledge that prejudice runs very deep in our society. And, in the real world, discrimination rears its ugly head in the shadows, where it's very difficult to root it out.

The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention.

I think perhaps it is a generational thing. I talk to younger people and they say, Where is this melancholy city you talk about My Istanbul is a sunny place.