The false pride of perennial celebration, of wearing flag lapel pins while betraying the values that the flag stands for, is like the self-esteem curriculum for toddlers, where everything is praised and no achievement ultimately has meaning.

The European problem is that it assumes that the minute a woman has a child, the mother identity subsumes the professional identity. Now she's the mother, above all, and we must give her all this time.

When I used to teach civil procedure as a law professor, I would begin the year by telling my students that “civil procedure is the etiquette of ritualized battle.” The phrase, which did not originate with me, captured the point that peaceful, developed societies resolve disputes by law rather than by force.

What mothers need, as well as fathers, spouses, and the children of aging parents, is an entire national infrastructure of care, every bit as important as the physical infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, broadband, parks and public works.

I think an awful lot of the reasons people put forward for not liking Hillary Clinton play into deep-seated, negative female stereotypes: ambition, secrecy, calculating. I mean, that is Lady Macbeth, a kind of cold woman. I don't think that's Hillary. And I don't think people would judge a man in the same way.

We all love narratives where we're the captain of our boat, and Americans love them more than anybody else.

I am convinced that this country is ready to have a woman in the White House, but I also think there's still a lot of hidden sexism.