Michael Mandelbaum Quotes & Sayings

“Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.”

“The great thing about baseball is the causality is easy to determine and it always falls on the shoulders of one person. So there is absolute responsibility. That's why baseball is psychologically the cruelest sport and why it really requires psychological resources to play baseball - because you have to learn to live with failure.”

“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 it's all different.”

“First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.”

“Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.”

“While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong.”

“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.”

“The values, the programs, the formula, the determination, and the patriotism responsible for America's past success are still here to be tapped.”

“All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.”

“If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.”