To make a living space, there first had to be a killing space.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.

All empires have depended on local legitimacy and local collaboration; they are not based primarily on coercion. An imperial rule that relies wholly on coercion can't endure. It's too expensive.

The British press has an insatiable appetite for making public things that should be private. It's a prurience that I've never understood.

I can't imagine having a conversation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations.

If young men have jobs - or the prospects of jobs - they are less likely to take up arms, they are less likely to join the resistance.

In Stalin's Russia racial persecution was often disguised as class warfare. More than 1.5 million members of ethnic minorities died as a result of forced resettlement.

Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.

this is a book about something

Even within perfection, there are flaws. These flaws carry an unattainable beauty, which is indifferent to the human nature.

Stuff is not enough.

Fame is nothing but an empty name.

The way that organizations and organisms anticipate the future is by taking signals from the past, most the time.

If you could stop reflecting, immediately you establish yourself in the ocean of peace.

I have no sense of time, and I'm a dreamer.

The Older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel

Now if you are condemned to life on welfare, I'm not so sure that being in a bigger welfare village is that much better than being in a smaller welfare village.