“There is no communication in this world except between equals.”

“You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.”

“I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.”

“I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.”

“One would think that making a film is an additive process; you're building this—it's not, it's subtractive. The best metaphor I know of is we make maple syrup in [Walpole, New Hampshire] and it tak...”

“I think this is the greatest threat to our republic ever. Not the Depression, not World War II, not the Civil War. This is it … This moment of all these intersecting viruses, of novel coronaviruses...”

“Teach all men to fish, but first teach all men to be fair. Take less, give more. Give more of yourself, take less from the world. Nobody owes you anything, you owe the world everything.”

“Respect? Of course, always, to all, because everything seems funnier when you're trying to show respect.”

“This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. ...”

“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

“Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.”

“Immer wieder behauptete Unwahrheiten werden nicht zu Wahrheiten, sondern, was schlimmer ist, zu Gewohnheiten.”

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

“The only honest way to approach the question of whiteness and blackness is to start by accepting that these are arbitrary categories that were invented in the 17th and 18th century in order to just...”

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ...”