I think President Barack Obama has been an extraordinarily successful president, and that this period will record that with a bunch of exclamation points. But obviously not everybody thinks that.

We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn't a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law.

If you take anything that succeeded, just imagine it succeeding 10 years before or 10 years after, you could almost always make, with the same plausibility, the "it fit the times" argument.

A well-functioning democracy has a culture of free speech, not simply legal protection of free speech. It encourages independence of mind. It imparts a willingness to challenge prevailing opinion through both words and deeds. Equally important, it encourages a certain set of attitudes in listeners, one that gives a respectful hearing to those who do not embrace the conventional wisdom. In a culture of free speech, the attitude of listeners is no less important than that of speakers.

I started to read as obsessively about Star Wars as I once did about Kant - and still do about behavioral economics and behavioral psychology.

I wouldn't call Trump supporters or Sanders supporters fanatical. One thing, I would say they're very discouraged with where things are. I don't think in either case they're fanatical.

The hero of the beloved Star Wars trilogy is Luke. The principle dynamic is the complicated relationship between Luke and his father. Not coincidentally, George Lucas' last name sounds a lot like Luke. That's the one he identified with. George Lucas had a tumultuous relationship with his own father, and people who know him say that you can't understand the backstory of the movies without knowing that his dad was occasionally difficult but also very loving. They had a big break between them. In those movies, he's very focused on sons and fathers.