I think it is important for readers to know that it is possible to bring intellectualism and idealism to the White House and still be political enough to advance an agenda.
Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds. Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.
I grew up in a very urban, bohemian family where everyone was a hippie or a pacifist. It was artistically and intellectually stimulating, but they were definitely not into outdoor sports or activities.
Thanks to postmodernism, we tend to see all facts as meaningless trivia, no one more vital than any other. Yet this disregard for facts qua facts is intellectually crippling. Facts are the raw material of thought, and the knowledge of significant facts makes sophisticated thought possible.
Stereotyped as convention-going, pocket-protector-wearing, chess-playing, infrequently-showering types, nerds are one of our society's most ridiculed groups. And, for a university with an international reputation as a bastion of intellectualism, Harvard is startlingly devoid of them.
Harvard prides itself on its diversity - economic, racial, social, geographical - but it remains intellectually segregated. It's not what conservative commentators seem to imagine - a bastion of liberal professors force-feeding radical opinions to a naive student body.
I love a guy who knows who he is, can make me laugh, and challenges me intellectually.
My father made me who I am; he was incredibly intellectually generous.
That is the thing that I was scared of - that I would know intellectually that there's something to glean out of life, but that I would be so broken that I wouldn't care.
Some fighters lose and their spirits are forever broken. A champion comes back stronger. If you're constantly dwelling on the past, 'I could have done that, I should have done this,' it doesn't help. You have to look at the situation intellectually and learn from it.
