All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.

Science is the business of generating testable hypotheses.

All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.

You can't get decent Mexican food in DC.

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. There is no mystery about why this should be so. Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes -- with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.

Safety is the last refuge of the scoundrel!

The purpose of history is to explain the present - to say why the world around us is the way it is. History tells us what is important in our world, and how it came to be. It tells us what is to be ignored, or discarded. That is true power - profound power. The power to define a whole society.