Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, Those who can, do, those who cant, teach, forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.

Scar Tissue is the only book Ive ever written when Ive felt completely toxic, ill.

If I am not elected, I imagine that I will ask Harvard to let me back.

Living fearlessly is not the same as never being afraid. It's good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher.

The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions-and Iraq may be one of them-when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror.

Patriotism is strong nationalistic feeling for a country whose borders and whose legitimacy and whose ethnic composition is taken for granted.

To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.