"Adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to European governments has benefited Europeans as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man."

"Liberals can always be trusted to see God in Mumia Abu-Jamal and the devil in the Pope."

"The only kind of marriage liberals had ever glorified is the gay kind. But thanks to Michael Schiavo, the sanctity of marriage is fast becoming a liberal sacrament, with the proviso it has to involve 'mercy killing.' It took Michael Schiavo's devoted efforts to starve and dehydrate his wife to restore liberal faith in the institution."

"Healthy patriotism is associated with robust particularism – petty provincialism, if you like – and certainly not with the deracinated globalism exhibited by our GI Joes and Janes."

"In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government... the poorer and less free the people."

"Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin."

"“Race and crime can be discussed as long as the topic is framed in ‘root-causes’ terms: stick to the Three Ps—patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness.”"

"Liberals retain a totemic attachment to the Freudian idea that traumatic toilet training is destiny."

"“Sexual exhibitionism—homosexual or heterosexual—is anathema. The heroic and creative inner struggle of an older generation of Gay Greats, exemplified by the late Nobel Prize-winning novelist Patrick White, was in the Greek tradition: silent and stoic, principled yet private.""

"A brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly nation fights because it can."

"From the fact that many libertarians believe that the state has no legitimacy, they arrive at the position that anything the state does is illegitimate. This is a logical confusion. Consider the murderer who happens on a scene of a rape while fleeing the law, saves the woman, and pounds the rapist. Is this good deed illegitimate because performed by a murderer?"

"Incarcerating people for their [drug] consumption choices has the consistency of arresting a survivor of suicide for attempted murder."

"The world mistakes Palestinian military weakness for moral innocence."

"During October 1962, John F. Kennedy frequently cited Barbara Tuchman’s celebrated bestseller August 1914, published a few months earlier. Tuchman’s account is disputed by some modern scholars. On one point, however, her view seems incontrovertible. None of the belligerent powers wanted the big war they got. But Austria-Hungary and Germany willed a small one, to crush and dismember Serbia, and some German generals were eager to seize an opportunity to humble Russia before her rising military might became overwhelming. The players lost control of events, with consequences for Europe that proved calamitous."

"the question remains: aside from a great writer, or a writer-historian of Barbara Tuchman's stature, who can draw an accurate picture of the situation and not enrage those who were there? Who can highlight the distress of both sides, without betraying either one?"

"The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity."

"The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution."

"As the era of the sword was ending, that of firearms began, in time to allow no lapse in man’s belligerent capacity."

"The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected."

"Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success."

"Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour."

"When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule."

"Chroniclers habitually matched numbers to the awesomeness of the event."

"On being shown a relic said to be a bone of St. Elizabeth, he (Sigismund) turned it over and remarked that it could just as well be that of a dead cobbler."

"Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse."

"Governments do not like to face radical remedies; it is easier to let politics predominate."

"If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished."

"The real reason for his attitude lay deeper. Essentially, Gloucester and the barons of his party were opposed to peace because they felt war to be their occupation. Behind them were the poorer knights and squires and archers of England, who, unconcerned with rights or wrongs, were “inclined to war such as had been their livelihood.”"

"Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels."

"Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated."

"To admit error and cut losses is rare among individuals, unknown among states."

"What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?"

"In the midst of events there is no perspective."

"His (Deschamps’) complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb."

"For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use."

"The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century."

"To put on the garment of legitimacy is the first aim of every coup."

"Business, like a jackal, trotted on the heels of war."

"If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?"

"Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, “no epoch was more naturally mad.”"

"For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions."

"What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact."

"Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control."

"When reproached for spending too much time with books and clerks, Charles answered, “As long as knowledge is honored in this country, so long will it prosper.”"

"Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex."

"In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record."