My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

It’s our generation that is witnessing the end of Western predominance. The average American used to be more than 20 times richer than the average Chinese. Now it’s just five times, and soon it will be 2.5 times.

As a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet.

My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.

The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.