“The rise of Islam offers perhaps the most impressive example in world history of the power of words to alter human behavior in sudden, surprising ways.”
“We have an enormous fixation on, what seems to me to be, the naïve idea that truth resides in what somebody wrote sometime in the past. If it's not written down, it isn't true. And that's absurd. But it's the way historians are trained: you have to have a source, and if you don't have something you can cite from an original source, in the original language, then you're not a really good historian, you're are not scientific, you're not true .”
“"Muscular bonding" is the most economical label I could find for this phenomenon, and I hope the phrase will be understood to mean the euphoric fellow feeling that prolonged and rhythmic muscular movement arouses among nearly all participants in such exercises.”
“We have to do the best we can with the language and concepts we inherit and not worry about obtaining a truth that will satisfy everyone, everywhere, and for all time”
