People who give money in large amount in politics are basically not altruistic. They have some issue. They have some interest. It may be world peace. It may be preserving carried interest. But it's not altruistic.

Students are too busy jumping through the next hurdle in the résumé race to figure out what they really want. They are too frantic tasting everything on the smorgasbord to have life-altering encounters. They have a terror of closing off options. They have been inculcated with a lust for prestige and a fear of doing things that may put their status at risk.

When you get a big crisis, everyone wants somebody with some experience and some credibility.

When your institution is under threat, you feel you have a lot of hostility, you feel things are slipping away, you have got internal problems, there's a tendency to turn inward and to focus on yourselves.

Democrats in environmental agencies tend to be more sensitive to environmental harm. And Republicans tend to be more sensitive to business harm.

Our emotions tell us what to value. They're like a little GPS system: Go that way. Don't go that way.

Donald Trump's ego is like a comet the size of Jupiter just traveling through the solar system, and we all have to be affected by its gravitational pull.