However little television you watch, watch less.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

The past after all is only another name for someone else's present.

Find something to do that you love because then the work itself is always the reward not the recompense. And if you love what you're doing you probably do better at it than doing something you don't love and therefore you'll be compensated appropriately.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

Once I discovered the endless fascination of doing the research and of doing the writing, I knew I had found what I wanted to do in my life. Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.