"The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well."

“America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.”

“Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.”

“Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.”

“One cannot say that it will never happen again, or that it cannot happen.”

“The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.”

“It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.”