Garry Wills

“There's an interesting contrast between born Catholics and converts. Converts are often much more rule-directed. Catholicism isn't something that they breathed in from their childhood, so they think that if you don't toe the line on abstract doctrine you can't be part of the Church.”

“I'm hardly macho. I present myself as very unnoticeable.”

“I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.”

“Only the winners decide what were war crimes.”

“I have nothing against priests. In fact, I tried for a time to be one... It should be clear, then, that I respect, and am often fond of, the many priests in my life.”

“Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.”

“Leadership - mobilization toward a common goal.”

“I don't get far enough into a boring book to hate it.”

“I would rather listen to plays in the car than read them.”

“The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership.”

“I have been an outsider in journalism and in the academy, because I never fully belonged to any of them.”