After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate. – Michael Mandelbaum
Read the news section of the newspaper and there is confusion and uncertainty, a world buffeted by large forces people neither understand nor control. But turn to the sports section and its all different. – Michael Mandelbaum
The cardinal sin in sports, what could really wreck it, is not cheating to win, which has gone on forever, but cheating to lose. That threatens a fundamental aspect of sports appeal, which is their spontaneity. If games are fixed, theyre no different from movies theyre scripted. – Michael Mandelbaum
Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future. – Michael Mandelbaum