Jonathan had been around Washington long enough to know that no offer was exactly what it seemed.

He had been around politicians for a long time, and he was prepared for some outburst.

They loved the sound of their own voices. No decision would be reached anytime soon.

In spite of his Cold War credentials, Kennedy still believed in the power of words.

Being on the inside could be an addiction

It is difficult to trust someone not raised to doctrine.

So many people of liberal persuasion value their own progressive opinions more than they value the people they hold those opinions about.

On the opening day of law school at Yale, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

He seemed to believe that indignation was a sufficient guardian.

He was vain and tended to surround himself with intellectual and moral pygmies.

He was the sort of man who only wanted to be told what he already assumed was true.

Size and elaboration were often mistaken for importance.

To Tom, the march of technology was equivalent to the march of civilization.

Our sense of history has grown dangerously thin, and our sense of proportion with it.

Coming from a business family, she shied away from abstractions.

She had been carried away by the need to defend herself.

People seem to remember the sacrifices they made more than what the sacrifices were for.

The victors always think they are righteous. But then, they always seem to start a mighty unrighteous squabbling over the spoils.

The only way to prove his willingness to wait would be to wait.

In a crisis, time was always the enemy.

Better to wait actively than passively.

She wasn't being methodological. She was being autobiographical.

The kind of people we have in Washington only trust what they think they own.

This isn't about your reputation. Our job right now is to make sure that there to ARE future historians.