The rise of the West is, quite simply, the pre-eminent historical phenomenon of the second half of the second millennium after Christ.

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

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

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

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.

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.

The eyes were of a color which he could never decide on, afterwards when he told the story he used to say they were the color of everything in Spring.

The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.

Don't think of it as losing a boyfriend. Think of it as gaining a stalker." -Dan Cahill

The companies that are successful, they start out to make meaning, not to make money.

I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part.

If you don't have the confidence to fall head over heels in love, you don't have the right to love.

My sense is that being a First Lady is a full-time job, but I'll know more when the time comes.

I just think if you're gonna play a show you should try and look nice.

What I would like to do is to leave behind a sustainable entity of a set of companies that operate in an exemplary manner in terms of ethics, values and continue what our ancestors left behind.