"I think that issues of gender have been discussed widely at Harvard. But I think I was chosen clearly on the merits, and I wish to operate as president on the merits. I think, on one level, we might say that I can affirm that women have the aptitude to do science or to do anything, including being president of Harvard."

"In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I's Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century."

"I think the most important leadership lessons I've learned have to do with understanding the context in which you are leading. Universities are places with enormously distributed authority and many different sorts of constituencies, all of whom have a stake in that institution."

"I've had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she died."

"I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me."

"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."

"Wisdom principle 34 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 41."

"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. Remember this in moments of decisive trial — an essential principle for the reflective life."