Take a look at public opinion. About 70 percent of the population, in the polls, said the [Vietnam ] war was fundamentally wrong and immoral, not a mistake. And that attitude lasted as long as polls were taken in the early '80s.

Suppose that, say, China established military bases in Colombia to carry out chemical warfare in Kentucky and North Carolina to destroy this lethal crop [tobacco] that is killing huge numbers of Chinese.

Well, they really didn't have to worry, because the way power politics works, the World Court can't do anything. Look, there's one country in the world at the moment which has refused to accept World Court decision-that's the United States. Is anybody going to do anything about it?

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

When I was a boy, we were the only Jewish family in a terribly anti-Semitic neighborhood. Those streets weren't any fun for us but our parents never found that out. In a way, you avoid telling your parents what happened to you during those days.

I doubt that national languages will disappear. In fact, to some extent they're becoming more diverse, like in Europe.

You win by struggle, and that requires understanding and serious analysis of the options and the circumstances, and then you can do a lot.