It has always been the aim of royalty and aristocracy to lower the individual liberty and independence of the common people. A baron and a minute-man could not breathe the same air.

The brutalities of a fight with bare hands, the crushed nasal bones, maimed lips, and other disfigurements, which call for the utter abolition of boxing in the interests of humanity, at once disappear when the contestants cover their hands with large, soft-leather gloves.

Prize-Fighting is not the aim of boxing. This noble exercise ought not to be judged by the dishonesty or the low lives of too many of its professional followers. Let it stand alone, an athletic practice, on the same footing as boating or football.

No writer for the press, however humble, is free from the burden of keeping his purpose high and his integrity white.

I didn't tell anyone I had lupus for many, many years, and I didn't tell anyone I had cancer. I was afraid no one would hire me, and I also felt it was deeply personal. It was nobody's business. Now, of course, my feelings have changed.

If you're working out in front of a mirror and watching your muscles grow, your ego has reached a point where it is now eating itself. That's why I believe there should be a psychiatrist at every health club, so that when they see you doing this, they will take you away for a little chat.

I have sat with countless patients and families to discuss grim prognoses: It's one of the most important jobs physicians have. It's easier when the patient is 94, in the last stages of dementia, and has a severe brain bleed. For young people like me - I am 36 - given a diagnosis of cancer, there aren't many words.

Studies demonstrate that as gaps are being closed between men and women - in access to education, in health, even in economic participation - the most difficult gap to close is in political participation. Somehow that sharing of raw power, political power, remains very illusive.