“Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they’re here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.”

Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America’s most privileged version of the level field.

The professionals must set a good example.

On a good day, I view the job [of president] as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch — engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction.

Major sports are major parts of society. It’s not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society.

Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace.

Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods.

It is not enough to offer a smorgasbord of courses. We must insure that students are not just eating at one end of the table.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

I’m the world’s expert on sterotypes held by academics about athletes and held by athletes about academics. To me, both of them are caricatures.

If a family is an expression of continuity through biology, a city is an expression of continuity through will amd imagination? through mental choices making artifice, not through physical reproduction.

A tremendous social responsibility comes with being a successful public performer.

People will say I’m an idealist. I hope so.

The university is our culture’s assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values.

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.

[Baseball] breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

I blundered into writing.

A Hot Fudge Sundae and a trashy novel is my idea of heaven.

An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.

When I realized I could use Facebook as a way to communicate directly with my fans, I thought it would be a great idea.

My biggest goal in life will be achieved when I have a family, when I have my own kids that I can raise myself and bring up based on what I know. I always think it’s the wildest idea – raising a whole, entire human is insane to me, and I’ve always wanted kids.

I had always been the theater nerd at Northwestern University. I knew I wanted to do acting, but I hated the idea of being this cliche – a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress.

Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil Our hope is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.

No power is as potent as the power of an idea.