Where's the progress that we're going to see in Afghanistan? You have to keep public support both on the economy and the war or these things will really become troubling.

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.

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

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.

Fire . . . Does that light by itself?

Prayer is not supposed to be magical.

If every community acts collectively, the city shall be clean.

I think Stephen Sondheim is a - and I hardly ever use this word - but this is as close as it gets to a genius.

If and when we get married, only a completely opposite system will prevail.

Selling real estate isn't like selling stock.

Quality is the one absolutely necessary ingredient of all the most successful companies in the world.

It doesn't matter how you travel it, it's the same road. It doesn't get any easier when you get bigger, it gets harder. And it will kill you if you let it.

Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue.

I thought that spring must last forevermore, For I was young and loved, and it was May.