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An election’s nothing more than a popularity contest, and popularity’s hardly a measure of any kind of administrative ability.

It’s an article of the religion of every adolescent that he or she knows far more than his elders; the half-formed mind suffers fools almost ecstatically.

Time, the slow, measured passage of years, is not exactly what we think it is. Humans tend to break time up into manageable pieces “ night and day, the turning of the seasons, the passage of years, centuries, eons ” but in actuality time is all one piece, a river flowing endlessly from the beginning toward some incomprehensible goal.

The notion that any one person can describe ‘what really happened’ is an absurdity. If ten “ or a hundred ” people witness an event, there will be ten “ or a hundred ” different versions of what took place. What we see and how we interpret it depends entirely upon our individual past experience.

A little word of caution here, if you don’t mind. When you know that something’s going to happen, you’ll start trying to see signs of its approach in just about everything. Always try to remember that most of the things that happen in this world aren’t signs. They happen because they happen, and their only real significance lies in normal cause and effect. You’ll drive yourself crazy if you start trying to pry the meaning out of every gust of wind or rain squall. I’m not denying that there might actually be a few signs that you won’t want to miss. Knowing the difference is the tricky part.

There’s a peculiar dichotomy in the nature of almost anyone who calls himself a historian. Such scholars all piously assure us that they’re telling us the real truth about what really happened, but if you turn any competent historian over and look at his damp underside, you’ll find a storyteller, and you can believe me when I tell you that no storyteller’s ever going to tell a story without a few embellishments. Add to that the fact that we’ve all got assorted political and theological preconceptions that are going to color what we write, and you’ll begin to realize that no history of any event is entirely reliable.

Have you ever noticed that? We base our assessment of the intelligence of others almost entirely on how closely their thinking matches our own. I’m sure that there are people out there who violently disagree with me on most things, and I’m broad-minded enough to concede that they might possibly not be complete idiots, but I much prefer the company of people who agree with me.

The problem with any idea is the fact that the more it gets bandied about, the more feasible it seems to become.