I take the world very personally. I take history personally; I want to place myself in the larger context.
Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington's reach, of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders, particularly the president.
I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.
It's absolutely crucial for the Democrats to have a sense of their history, of who they are, in order to be able to project their values and stand up for them.
For thousands of years, men have written history, so it seems to me that most of what we've read is from the male point of view.
The history of storytelling isn't one of simply entertaining the masses but of also advising, instructing, challenging the status quo.
After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.
What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies and the quarrels of those who engage in contention for power.
Don't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
A man of great memory without learning hath a rock and a spindle and no staff to spin.
I'm not a great believer in awards-of course the fact that I've never won one has nothing to do with it at all!
The more painful it is, tragically, the more you do learn, though, that's the good part.
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
Holding our own government to account for the use of its power is, in my view, the highest mission of a U.S. news organization.
How many writers in history have ever been as famous as Stephen King? He casts an awfully long shadow.
A political convention is not a place where you can come away with any trace of faith in human nature.
An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.
Our awesome responsibility to ourselves, to our children, and to the future is to create ourselves in the image of goodness, because the future depends on the nobility of our imaginings.
There used to be a cruel joke that said Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be; Obama is the Brazil of today's politicians. He has obviously achieved nothing.
It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.
The Smithsonian should box and preserve Tim McGraw's Nashville den for a future exhibit entitled 'Early 21st Century American Man Cave.'
