Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.

To be in the history books of anything is fantastic,

Thinkers too often disparage men of action in ways that do them no credit.

The people who read the history books tend to have a natural zeal and are alarmingly well-read.

If the history of the western moral imagination is the story of an enduring and unending revolt against human cruelty, there are few more consequential figures than Raphael Lemkin - and few whose achievements have been more ignored by the general public. It was he who coined the word 'genocide.' He was also its victim.

Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart.