You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

Read somewhat in the English poets every day. You will find them elegant, entertaining and constructive companions through your whole life.

Nothing ever invented can you a bigger life than a book.

You've got to marinate your head, in that time and culture. You've got to become them." (Speaking about researching, and reading, and immersing yourself in History)

I just thank my father and mother, my lucky stars, that I had the advantage of an education in the humanities.

I think it is one of the most extraordinary elections, a turning point for our country and for the world. That remarkable young man [Barack Obama] has kept his demeanor, kept his temperament and has shown a power to inspire. I see what energy that he has inspired among the young. Well, it inspires us old goats too.

I want people to see that all-important time in a different way-in the way it was. For of a number of reasons, including the absence of photographs, we tend to see the men and women of the Revolution as not quite real. And we have far too little sense of what they suffered.