Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.

We have much wisdom to gain by learning to understand other people's cultures and permitting ourselves to accept that there is more than one version of reality.

It's very hard to know who your readers are, but that's who I'm... if I have somebody in my head, that's probably who it is.

It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.

Harvard has something that manages, I think, to provide a lot of options for students, but still fairly prescriptive about the kinds of subjects that the courses ought to cover.

One of the oddities about responses that you get to what you write, if you get a fair number of them, is that people have very different ideas of what you said.

Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.