The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.

The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.

The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

The accounts that history presents have to be paid. Past has to be reconciled with present in the life of a nation. History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.