Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.

It would be suicide in the American academy to show too early an interest beyond your doctoral specialization: charges of everything from charlatanry to ambition would be levied and tenure denied. I've seen this first-hand.

How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else?

For Europe to play a part in the world on the scale of its wealth and its population and its capacities, Europe has to be united in some way, and Europe is not united.

It's the advantage of the virus to spread, and you can only spread when you infect people and they infect other people without necessarily killing them. So if you had 100 percent mortality, the potential pandemic would almost self-eliminate itself.

From dear, dear Gloria Swanson, I learned how to live long, happy and free of health problems. I owe her my life.

I did not want to reject religion as nonsense because life seemed to have no ultimate purpose without it, and most of the good people I knew were Christians.

I have experienced a murderer among my friends. Many, many years ago. At close range I have seen the impact of it. I knew the victim, I went to the funeral, I have been to the house, to the specific room where the killing took place, and I was stunned by it. It's such a blow.