I argued that the Bush administration, and the Coalition officials more recently, didn't understand Iraqi society. They thought it was a blank slate, that they could use Iraqis as guinea pigs.

If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.

Administering another country is always a very tricky proposition.

My main expertise is in the past, but if I have to extrapolate into the future, I would say: no good news any time soon and an obvious exit strategy is not apparent to me.

I don't accept the argument of people like David Horowitz that the government should impose some sort of predetermined political balance on academic research.

It's not proper for a professor to go before a class and promote one party or another. That's not academic scholarship.

Partisan politics has no place in the classroom.

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.

I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.

I think it's really unfortunate that academics have been sidelined in most important policy debates.

An occupying power has no right to make significant alterations in the character of the occupied society, to change the laws all around, without a strong security reason and so forth.

It's ok to be a fool once or twice but never let it be a third time. Be smart and pretend to be a fool and at the end of the hunt make sure you're the one that has the gun.

It's been amazing, the number of commercials that I've done, starting back in 1968. It must be 8, 000.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

I think the extreme complexity of medicine has become more than an individual clinician can handle. But not more than teams of clinicians can handle.

I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.

Cookies at both of them. The cookies are probably better at Letterman though.

I keep a notebook of the things I need to get done in a day, week, month along with my overarching goals. Whenever I have a couple moments on set or on a plane, I work on ticking off my to-do list.

Carli Fiorina is really annoying. Hell, they're all annoying. But Fiorina doesn't even pretend to offer up policy answers. She just gives mini stump speeches about how bad everything is.

Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.

For me the present is merged in eternity. I may not sacrifice the latter for the present.