If your ambition comes at the price of an unbalanced life, that there's nothing else that gives you comfort but success, it's not worth it.

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.

When everything else is shattering, you feel like the one true constant.

Well one tiny poisonous spider can kill a very large man if it bites him in the right place.

"If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying."

If you don't see something as a career but as an important part of your life, you don't know how you're going to feel about it.

Throw out and keep throwing out. Elegance means elimination.

Remember: success does not lead to happiness - it's the other way around. Greater happiness is what leads to greater success.

I like having a song in my head that's never been heard and then going into a studio and recording it and hearing it exist in the world. It's a magical part. Filled with wonder.

Without doubt, the most common weakness of all human beings is the habit of leaving their minds open to the negative influence of other people.

Has it struck you that the music which is regarded as the most sublime in western civilization, which is the music of Bach, is called baroque?

You do not need to do anything first to be enlightened.