There is something about guns that inhibits understanding. It is not just that they can put an end to argument. They somehow generate beliefs that are obviously contrary to observable fact.

Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled through the critical events of his time, has long appealed to biographers. Paine was present at the creation both of the United States and of the French Republic. His eloquence, in the pamphlet 'Common Sense,' propelled the American colonists toward independence.

Both European and American historians have done away with any conceptual limits on what in the past needs and deserves investigating. The result, among other things, has been a flood of works on gender history, black history, and ethnic history of all kinds.

No one escapes from the past without bearing some of its burdens.

When you're acting in a scene, you're focused on doing the scene. You can't break character and go, 'Oh my God, I love what you're doing!'

I really like raw connections, and so I've always had a harder time in politics because I feel there's a lot of veneer around everything.

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress', doesn't spread.

As long as I have my faith in God, I'm good. I know everything else is going to come.