The less oil the world uses, the less important the region that has so much of it becomes.

All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.

In the past when a country became as powerful as the United States, other countries would band together to clip its wings. But that isn't happening now and I don't think it's not going to happen, because other countries are not threatened by us, and they secretly appreciate the services that we provide, even if they don't usually say so.

Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people and changed the lives of many more. But they did not change the world.

If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.

People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must.