"Botvinnik grew up in an assimilated family, but encountered antisemitism in daily life. He displayed courage in the dark years of Stalin and after, and published warm words about Israel, Pinhas Rutenberg, and the kibbutz, defending the right of the Jews to live in their ancient homeland. In contrast to other Jewish cultural activists, he never signed letters condemning Israel."

"Physicists, we have a sort of arrogance... which has harmed us a lot. ...We forget that we're in a bubble and ...that there's actually a science of how you persuade people ...of how to communicate, an…"

"During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinis…"

"The people I was listening to never sold a lot of records. John Lee Hooker was never on the charts, so I was never in it from a commercial point of view. Other people expected things from my records, …"

"The Americans' "open-mindedness", which is sometimes cited in their favor, is the other side of their interior formlessness. The same goes for their "individualism". Individualism and personality are …"