We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.

In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.

The glories of the past compensated for the imperfections of the present.

There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.

Stephen Douglas's oratory was designed for the galleries, Lincoln's for his peers

I woke up full of hate and fear the day before the most recent peace march in San Francisco. This was disappointing: I'd hoped to wake up feeling somewhere between Virginia Woolf and Wavy Gravy.

The more I looked, the more I found Christian Atheists everywhere.

Privacy is dead. Reputations are dying.

Good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.

If you belong to the underclass, you are already guilty.

You sounded like someone who should be singing on a cruise ship. Halfway through your song, I wished the ship was sinking.

I love gothic monsters, but I like to root them more firmly in the traditional folklore from which they sprang. Or at least, I like to evoke the feeling of those folk stories.

The best things that have ever happened to me have not been the result of anything I have done. Some might say that is luck. I call them blessings and in some cases miracles.