“One of my strongest guiding beliefs in life is the moral duty of empiricism, of actively checking, of actively trying to discover where you’re wrong. And then correcting your beliefs and not letting your preconceptions interfere with that to an undue extent. I think history and journalism both try to teach that.”

– from an interview with Jonathan Rauch.

Also from that interview:

“I think Maureen Dowd is very good at what she does. But the problem is that lots of people who aren’t any good at it think this is journalism.”

“Don’t go to law school unless you want to be a lawyer.”