The historian imagines leaders who move nations by themselves, as the physicist imagines spherical cows of uniform density.
Jan 022013
Jan 012013
Legality is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Dec 312012
Where ideas compete freely, the prettiest win.
Dec 282012
Cows chew cud, people read newspapers.
Dec 272012
In hell you are forced to reread continuously all the books you loved when you were twenty.
Dec 262012
The more hands your opinions have passed through, the more likely you are to regard them as your own.
Dec 252012
We call past ages unhappy with no better warrant than supposing that we would have been unhappy in them.
Dec 242012
Youth is lost like money — gradually, then suddenly.
Dec 212012
Our collective delusion that we can fix most problems is another problem we can’t fix.
Dec 202012
In 1870 Henry Adams wrote that everything was respectable, and nothing amusing. Today everything is amusing, and nothing respectable.