If George Washington crossing the Delaware matters, so must his ruthless pursuit of the runagate Oney Judge.

Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.

An America that looks away is ignoring not just the sins of the past but the sins of the present and the certain sins of the future.

What sets black people apart is not some deficit in personal responsibility. It's the weight on our shoulders. That is what's actually different. We have the weight and burden of history.

The best part of writing is not the communication of knowledge to other people, but the acquisition and synthesizing of knowledge for oneself.

I did not know then that this is what life is - just when you master the geometry of one world, it slips away, and suddenly again, you're swarmed by strange shapes and impossible angles.

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.

Racism is, among other things, the unearned skepticism of one group of humans joined to the unearned sympathy for another.

[E]mpathy - not squishy self-serving conflict avoidance - is the hand-maiden, not the enemy, of reason and intellectual inquiry.

You can live in the world of myth and be taken seriously.

The standard progressive approach of the moment is to mix color-conscious moral invective with color-blind public policy.

Wisdom is not in having resources, it's in knowing how to use them, when to use them & if to use them.

Human brain is structured to avoid any kind of refutation of one's religious beliefs.

Throw away the newspapers. Discard all the useless debates and gossiping. Start working in silence. Start working on your passion. And make the news yourself.

No one can keep his griefs in their prime they use themselves up.

Should the political process not work, there is always the other approach.

Twitter is a lot like crystal meth, because it's really fun to do and Oprah's on it.

If a great part comes up and the guy's meant to have an Eastern European accent, great; but if it's a bad part I won't take it.

When Nirvana hit it big, it was overwhelming because we were part of the counterculture. Nirvana didn't go to the mainstream - the mainstream came to Nirvana.

He [Moliere] pleases all the world, but cannot please himself.

At 100, I have a mind that is superior - thanks to experience - than when I was 20.