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

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

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

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

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

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.

When you appreciate anything or love anything, you attract it with the universal force of attraction.

I guess it’s true

Every hill becomes a mountain when one has to climb up it.

The terms of the 2008 constitution [which ensures the military will continue to be the ultimate authority] could not benefit Burma in the long run. I think this constitution should be revised.

In Europe, I always have fun bike riding in Amsterdam.

For three long years I have been going up and down this country preaching that government . . . costs too much. I shall not stop that preaching.

Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.

The secret of joy is hidden in the word itself: first J, then O, then Y: Jesus first, Others next, Yourself last.

Residuals from Australia, from the Mission Magic show, saved my butt. So there is a reason for everything.

I feel this music has nurtured me as I've been immersing myself in it. I've felt supported by it.