"But by showing us live coverage of every bad thing happening everywhere in the world, cable news makes life seem like it's just an endless string of disasters - when, for most people in most places today, life is fairly good."

"It was Orwellian. I completely disappeared, and disappeared the same day. It was by early that evening when the Times story ran. That was an overreaction. All human beings under pressure behave poorly."

"I'm a smart guy, I know the history of this issue and why people care about it."

"I think professional sports, football, to use it as an example, it's fundamentally a form of entertainment."

"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."

"The senior officer who met with reporters in Baghdad said there had been 21 car bombings in the capital in May, and 126 in the past 80 days. All last year, he said, there were only about 25 car bombings in Baghdad."

"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say."

"Students who are interested in learning about the environment should not be dissuaded from doing so, but only if they have proved their proficiency in other basic courses, such as U.S. history. Until then, we need to focus on producing well-educated citizens steeped in their country's history and mindful of their civic responsibilities."