Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.

When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood NOT as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible.

The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesnt enter into it.

History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

Why do beautiful women love ugly men?

Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

In kindergarten, you can learn how to be a citizen of the world.

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; thats what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.

Old reference books are like tree rings. Without them, there'd be no way to know what a tree had lived through.

Greatness can only be procured with the currency of time and discipline

All the higher forms of life have evolved from some one's ideal of justice, liberty or beauty; and the belief that nothing is too good to be true.

It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. If you know despair or can see it in others.

Ten Days That Shook The World, by Eisenstein, I went to see it, and I was so impressed with this film, so impressed with what cinema could do.

Life is a series of dreams, a series of interlocking awarenesses. I don't necessarily believe in linear time. Everything happens all at once forever.

It's not everyday that a whistleblower is actually willing to be identified.

If you want to experience all of the successes and pleasure in life, you have to be willing to accept all the pain and failure that comes with it.

It's nice to have a debate in a swing state.

There is only one search: wandering... no dogma and no heresy.

I feel so grateful to my mother and father for a happy childhood. There are things I now understand that they were able to give me that are very special.