The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity.

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease.

There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

Excellence is the eternal quest. We achieve it by living up to our highest intellectual standards and our finest moral intuitions. In seeking excellence, take life seriously-but never yourself!

History is full of surprises.

The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.

The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake.