"The fact is that America has been at her most prosperous when government and the private sector have been not at war, but in a wary, if often underplayed, alliance. History is unmistakable on this point."

"While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture."

"It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country."

"Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith."

"The stoutest timber is forged in the fiercest gales, not in the sheltered grove. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."

"Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance."

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."

"In my opinion, the most significant works of the twentieth century are those that rise beyond the conceptual tyranny of genre they are, at the same time, poetry, criticism, narrative, drama, etc."