Columbia University Alumni

"Who, in your view, should have the power to draw the line between a “lie” and “free speech”? Government officials that want to stay in political power or the people that can hold them accountable ?"

"The best thing for a child is for parents (to) be consistent and have what they need. This is like the total opposite of that, in some ways. Because the kids are 100% traumatized. Parents don’t know and have no consistency."

"What’s the ‘one thing’ you do for your child? Children need everything, not one thing."

"When we think about income inequality, when we think about what the future looks like for our communities, [troubled schools are] no longer just an isolated problem. It’s a problem that we as Americans have to face, and if we don’t, we’re going to have a workforce that’s poorer and less prepared."

"Radical empathy is not about you and what you think about a situation that you have never been in and probably never will be. It is a kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it."

"Be joyful warriors and constant justice seekers."

"There is no more familiar, and possibly no more important, figure in the history of Latin learning during the twelfth century that Peter Abelard who flourished at its beginning. His career, as set forth in his own words, illustrated educational conditions in at that time. His brilliant success as a lecturer on logic and theology at Paris reveals the in embryo. His pioneer work, ', set the fashion for the standard method of presentation employed in ."

"Instead of describing the personal appearance of the general and statesman, , in his biography of that worthy, Plutarch referred his readers to a bronze statue of him at Rome opposite the . But to-day the statue has disappeared, and the same is true of most of the manners and customs of the distant past, which were once too familiar for historians to think it worth while to mention them to their readers."

"Many accept the date, July 19, 4241, for the origin of the . The s had a day of twenty-four hours, a month of thirty days, and a year of three hundred and sixty-five days made up of twelve months and five extra days which were regarded as unlucky. The division of the month into three ten-day periods seems traceable to the . Their year began on what for us would be July 19, when the star or first appeared on the eastern horizon simultaneously with the rising sun. This was furthermore about the time of the which meant so much to the prosperity of the land."

"The history of any art is a history of man's states of mind and spirit, not of the objective world around him. To be ignorant of that is to be ignorant of the theater as an art, and leads to a mere muddle of resemblances and recognitions, a confusion between life and the theatre, contradictions about naturalness and artifice, and blindness to such ideas as require a new method or form to express them."

"s throve at the s of kings, and sometimes their advice was taken even by him whose very act was held to be under special divine direction. It would be a great mistake to think that the astrologer was maintained for the amusement of king and court, like the . His utterances were taken most seriously, and the principles of his art were so generally accepted as to become the commonplaces of the thought and the conversation of daily life. In 1305, for instance, who certain s urged to return to Rome, they reminded him that every planet was most powerful in its own house."

"The most valuable thing in my college Latin courses was that they were under a Virginian from the , whose belief in this was inherited and profound and therefore contagious."

"Stark Young was a man of protean interests in the arts. Because of this breadth of interest, it is arguable whether his main achievement was in fiction or in criticism, since he excelled in both, but after immersing myself in Young's critical writings in the theater, I have come to the conclusion that Young was the finest American critic on the art of the theatre of the first half of this century ..."

"Is there a way to translate the complexity into a narrative that has a kind of hook that will grab people?"

"Not long after , authorities in released decades-old documents about the death of her brother. The original police reports—several dozen yellowed pages, some covered in handwritten jottings, some of them typed—contain revelations that call into question the 1987 state-police report that declared the killing an accident."

"Jefferson had served as America's minister to France between 1785 and the outbreak of the French Revolution and had developed a fascination with . Upon his return to America, he continued to order large quantities of for himself and for George Washington and stipulated in one 1790 letter that there respective shipments should be marked with their initials. During his firs term as president, Jefferson spent $7,500—roughly $120,000 in today's currency—on wine, and he is generally regarded as America's first great wine connoisseur. (He might also have been America's first great wine bore. "There was, as usual, a dissertation upon wines," John Quincy Adams noted in his diary after dining with Jefferson in 1807. "Not every edifying.")"

"In July, 2008, was stripped of its license. n officials then granted exploration permits for half of the deposit to a much smaller company: is, by some estimates, the richest man in Israel; according to , his personal fortune amounts to some nine billion dollars. Steinmetz, who made his name in the trade, hardly ever speaks to the press, and the corporate structures of his various enterprises are so convoluted that it is difficult to assess the extent of his holdings. The was a surprising addition to Steinmetz’s portfolio, because B.S.G.R. had no experience exporting . A mining executive in Guinea told me, “Diamonds you can carry away from the mine in your pocket. With iron ore, you need infrastructure that can last decades.”"

"One chilly morning last week, at a on the edge of , the Roca brothers came in from the cold. They were visiting New York on a twenty-four-hour furlough from , their dining establishment in northeast Spain, which, according to a list issued annually by the ..., is currently the best on the planet. Joan (head chef), Josep (sommelier), and Jordi (desserts) were dressed in dark parkas that did not look quite up to the weather. The plan had been to visit the Greenmarket across the street, but they were hesitating. “It’s cold in Spain this time of year,” Jordi said, nibbling nonjudgmentally on a Pret croissant. “But not like this.”"

"Since the earliest ages every civilized community has provided for the protection of the citizen from defamation of character, and practically the same theories of redress and penalties as exist to-day were held under the very ancient laws."

"A distinction between criticism and defamation is, that criticism deals only with such things as invite public attention or call for public comment, and does not follow a man into his private life, or pry into his domestic concerns. It never attacks the individual, but only his work. A criticism of a public man, consisting of imputations upon his motives, which arise fairly and legitimately out of his conduct, is generally regarded as justifiable."

"Science is systematic organisation of knowledge about the universe on the basis of explanatory hypotheses which are genuinely testable. Science advances by developing gradually more comprehensive theories; that is, by formulating theories of greater generality which can account for observational statements and hypotheses which appear as prima facie unrelated."

"He was a brat."

"Donald is cruel."

"You can’t trust him."

"All he wants to do is appeal to his base."

"He has no principles."

"He doesn’t read."

"It was all about him."

"Not ringed but rare, not gilled but polyp-like, having sprung up overnight— These mushrooms of the gods, resembling human organs uprooted, rooted only on the air,"

"And life is a rain-swept mirror Through which perpetually A girl with bright hair flowing, Dappled dark coat blowing, Into the unknown, knowing, Walks with me."

"Tasting of the sweet damp woods and of the rain one inch above the meadow: It was like feasting upon air."

"The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy sh-t."

"He hangs in the hall by his black cravat, The ladies faint, and the children holler: Only my Daddy could look like that, And I love my Daddy like he loves his Dollar."

"The long-haired Yak has long black hair, He lets it grow — he doesn't care. He lets it grow and grow and grow, He lets it trail along the stair. Does he ever go to the barbershop? NO! How wild and woolly and devil-may-care A long-haired Yak with long black hair Would look when perched in a barber chair!"

"Now touch the air softly, Step gently. One, two... I’ll love you till roses Are robin’s-egg blue; I’ll love you till gravel Is eaten for bread, And lemons are orange, And lavender’s red."

"The metaphor of the melting pot is unfortunate and misleading. A more accurate analogy would be a salad bowl, for, though the salad is an entity, the lettuce can still be distinguished from the chicory, the tomatoes from the cabbage."

"A silver-scaled dragon with jaws flaming red Sits at my elbow and toasts my bread. I hand him fat slices, and then, one by one, He hands them back when he sees they are done."

"And I’ll love you as long As the furrow the plow, As However is Ever, And Ever is Now."

"I know a place all fennel-green and fine Far from the white ice cap, the glacial flaw, Where shy mud hen and dainty porcupine Dance in delight by a quivering pawpaw;"

"The lariat snaps; the cowboy rolls His pack, and mounts and rides away. Back to the land the cowboy goes."

"Thinking of you this evening, I think of mystery; I think of umbrellas of crystal Shading a cinnamon sea;"

"Marco Madella and Dorian Fuller : ‘Archaeological research in Cholistan has led to the discovery of a large number of sites along the dry channels of the Ghaggar-Hakra river (often identified with the lost Sarasvati and Drishadvati rivers of Sanskrit traditions) ... The final desiccation of some of these channels may have had major repercussions for the Harappan Civilisation and is considered a major factor in the de-centralisation and de-urbanisation of the Late Harappan period.’"

"If women had wives to keep house for them, to stay home with vomiting children, to get the car fixed, fight with the painters, run to the supermarket, reconcile the bank statements, listen to everyone’s problems, cater the dinner parties, and nourish the spirit each night, just imagine the possibilities for expansion — the number of books that would be written, companies started, professorships filled, political offices that would be held, by women."

"Ah, mastery ... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills ... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing."

"The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity."

"Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough; and when you have enough, you have self-respect."

"Creativity could be described as letting go of certainties."

"Walter Fairservis, Jr .,' describing the Harappan site of Mohenjo-daro, has dwelt on a structure "known to the excavators as the Assembly Hall". He 2 writes: "Badly preserved, it is nonetheless one of the most striking monuments at Mohenjodaro. It consisted of a broad pillared hall opening principally to . the north, i.e., towards the highest part of the site. Twenty rectangular pillars approximately five feet by three feet in size supported the roof. The pillars were arranged in rows of four with five pillars to each row." After detailing the rest of the important features of the building complex containing the pillared hall , Fairservis ' comments on this complex: " One cannot help but speculate.. . that it was constructed in response to a formality urged by religion or government. Was it indeed a place of assembly or perhaps a place of audience? Wheeler rightfully refers to the Achaemenid pillared hall of audience, the apadana, in this context, and such a comparison is certainly called to mind."

"The succeeding phase of Mundigak I, says Fairservis, adds to the KGM ware " the jars and cups and design repertoire, including black and red polychrome painting familiar in Quetta [central Baluchistan] as the Kechi Beg wares, and which in turn have their equivalents in the early Hissar Culture of north-eastern Iran. ""

"We should join to them Mundigak in South Afghanistan, about whose pottery Fairservis, Jr., has the general statement: " ...the Mundigak sequence is closely paralleled in northern Baluchistan - so much so, in fact, that one can say that they are essentially of one and the same tradition.""