War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states

From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.

I can see that you [Bruce Cole] are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.

They're spreading out. Look unaware and sweet and innocent. It's a little hard to look innocent when I'm as big as a house.

Solitude without togetherness deteriorates into loneliness. One needs strong roots in togetherness to be solitary rather than lonely when one is alone.

We must ask ourselves how many times others would benefit more from our silence than from our words.

In short, competition has to shoulder the responsibility of explaining all the meaningless ideas of the economists, whereas it should rather be the economists who explain competition.

Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and in change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted by nature as to die.

I realized with grief that purposeless activities in language arts are probably the burial grounds of language development and that coffins can be found in most classrooms, including mine.

Men can not stand the explosive mixture of beauty and intelligence.

We wanted the best, but it turned out as always.

A pitcher needs two pitches, one they're looking for and one to cross them up.