Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.

The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament it is its ancient and natural strength the floating bulwark of the island.

William Blackstone

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.

Emo Philips

Part of our essential humanity is paying respect to what God gave us and what will be here a long time after we're gone.

William J. Clinton

Success is the person who year after year reaches the highest limits in his field.

Sparky Anderson

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom.

Mark Twain

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune but great minds rise above them.

Washington Irving

We have peace with Israel. We're actually the last man standing. So there is going to be immense pressure and people asking, 'Why are we having this relationship when it's not benefiting anybody?' Obviously, my answer is you always benefit from peace.

King Abdullah II

Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.

Jeffrey Eugenides

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Peace congresses often start by dealing with some of the less important questions in excessive detail, so at the end there is no time to discuss the most important problems.

Fredrik Bajer

By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.

Richard Milhous Nixon

To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don't know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.

Don DeLillo