Kagan's Quotes

#1. Kagan's law of first contact,'You'll surprise you more than they will.

Janet Kagan

#2. Joy and serenity are not slavishly tied to our physiology. We are not programmed neurons over which we have no control. We are collaborators in the generation of our thoughts and emotions.

Jerome Kagan

#3. Marketing has always been about the same thing - who your customers are and where they are.

Noah Kagan

#4. When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.

Robert Kagan

#5. My two must-haves are my cell phone and my MacBook Pro laptop, which allows me to update my Web site from wherever I am, whether I'm in Africa or in Sun Valley skiing.

Daryn Kagan

#6. It was a very cool thing to be a smart girl, as opposed to some other, different kind. And I think that made a great deal of difference to me growing up and in my life afterward.

Elena Kagan

#7. It is absolutely true that I have served in two Democratic administrations. You can tell something from me and my political views from that.

Elena Kagan

#8. We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.

Donald Kagan

#9. Talking doom and gloom all day no longer fit who I was as a person.

Daryn Kagan

#10. I left Russia in 1993 optimistic that democracy had taken hold despite the obstacles.

Robert Kagan

#11. After hunger, a human's most important need is to know what is virtuous.

Jerome Kagan

#12. History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story.

Donald Kagan

#13. Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

Donald Kagan

#14. I think it's particularly fun not being a full-time showbiz reporter because you still have the 'Oh, wow!' factor when you go out on the red carpet and there are these big stars that are standing there. But if you're doing this day in and day out, it becomes a little blase.

Daryn Kagan

#15. I think most people live in a space where they are looking for meaning in life and good in the world and that is not necessarily reflected in straight news coverage right now.

Daryn Kagan

#16. You have no tail!" said Brightspot. her own whipped suddenly forward; she stared, first at it, then at Wilson."How do you manage?

Janet Kagan

#17. I think the nine justices think the solicitor general is the 35th clerk.

Elena Kagan

#18. I think that if there are positions that you can't argue ... then the responsibility is probably to resign. If one's own conscience is opposed to the requirements and responsibilities of the job, then it's time to leave the job.

Elena Kagan

#19. Therefore, it is forbidden to say anything to anyone that might cause animosity between any two people.

Israel Meir Kagan

#20. From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

Donald Kagan

#21. The dimple in his left cheek was ironic-it gave the impression that he was sweet as a cupcake. (Dark City Lights)

Elaine Kagan

#22. If you're really invested in feeling bad about the world, there are a lot of media outlets out there that you can turn to.

Daryn Kagan

#23. Blew it up his nose. That woman should have cards printed: 'Dr. Evan Wilson, Imaginative Medicine a Specialty.

Janet Kagan

#24. If a caterpillar doesn't know its future has wings, it hardly experiences itself as land-bound.

Robert Kagan

#25. The dance is sweeter than the song.' "Let

Janet Kagan

#26. love was nothing but a prison for fools.

Roberta Kagan

#27. Friends are friends," Brightspot said, "whether I've known them for a long time or a short time.

Janet Kagan

#28. Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame.

Robert Kagan

#29. There is very little 'of course' when it comes to custom

Janet Kagan

#30. All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire.

Donald Kagan

#31. During the latency years, American children need experiences that promote academic talents, a sense of responsibility, and most important, a belief that they can attain the goals valued by self and community. They need reassurance that these goals are attainable.

Jerome Kagan

#32. Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form.

Jerome Kagan

#33. That year the Ribeiro's daffodils seeded early and they seeded cockroaches. Now, ecologically speaking, even a cockroach has its place
but these suckers bit. That didn't sound Earth-authentic to me. Not that I care, mind you, all I ask is useful. I wasn't betting on that either.

Janet Kagan

#34. If you don't take your clothes seriously, why should your viewers take you seriously?

Daryn Kagan

#35. When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public.

Elena Kagan

#36. Well, I think he's right to notice that there is a difference in attitudes and even in the broadest sense of world view between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Which is old and which is new is an interesting question, and I almost think that maybe he's got it backwards.

Robert Kagan

#37. Britain has taken itself out as a major player in the international system, at least for a while, with the kind of cuts that they've made in their national security budget.

Robert Kagan

#38. Once again the historian who wishes to understand this difficult period must try to read between the lines. It

Donald Kagan

#39. Darkness is not chased away with sticks, not even cannons. One simply lights a small candle and the darkness flees before it.

Israel Meir Kagan

#40. is through student discourse and the interaction of different ideas that students construct meaning. Often

Spencer Kagan

#41. No one ever got rich checking their email more often.

Noah Kagan

#42. I believe it is still true that conflicts among major powers usually stem from geopolitical rivalries but rarely from economic competition.

Robert Kagan

#43. The thing that I would say is that U.S. power is not eternal. I am not saying that it won't come to an end. Because it will.

Robert Kagan

#44. A true measure of an entrepreneur / successful-person is how they deal with adversity.

Noah Kagan

#45. In fact, corporate and union moneys go overwhelmingly to incumbents, so limiting that money, as Congress did in the campaign finance law, may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done.

Elena Kagan

#46. Everyday I meet folks who show me how to look at challenges differently.

Daryn Kagan

#47. So', she said, lifting her beer in a toast to the newest comer to LostRoses. 'Do you have a name or was your mother too appalled by your looks to claim you?

Janet Kagan

#48. Based on all criteria - military power, economic influence, cultural dominance - America remains number one, even though other, new players are increasingly challenging it in that role.

Robert Kagan

#49. So who's more adult- somebody who works like mad to avoid a problem or somebody who works like mad to solve it?

Janet Kagan

#50. It's important to be informed but I also think it's important to be inspired. I'm creating a space where people can be inspired.

Daryn Kagan

#51. Under our Constitution, military leaders have no choice but to endorse the president's decision after giving him their best advice.

Robert Kagan

#52. The world says that time is money, but I say that money is time. In order to earn enough money to satisfy his desires, one must sacrifice inordinate amounts of time. For me, that sacrifice is too great.

Israel Meir Kagan

#53. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.

Robert Kagan

#54. A startup can focus on only one metric. So you have to decide what that is and ignore everything else.

Noah Kagan

#55. My politics would be, must be, have to be, completely separate from my judgment.

Elena Kagan

#56. In Our Underachieving Colleges, [Derek] Bok acts as both diagnostician and healer, wielding social-science statistics and professional studies to trace the etiology of today's illnesses and to recommend palliative treatments for what he has discovered.

Donald Kagan

#57. I think people ought to be called what they want to be called.

Janet Kagan

#58. Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less.

Robert Kagan

#59. Consuming is the opposite of producing.

Noah Kagan

#60. Times might be tough, your head and thoughts might be spinning, but I find it's physically impossible to do that spiral thing when your mind is focused on giving and creating opportunity.

Daryn Kagan

#61. And what my constitutional values are are wholly irrelevant to the job, and so neither you nor anyone else will know what they are.

Elena Kagan

#62. War has been more common than peace, and extended periods of peace have been rare in a world divided into multiple states

Donald Kagan

#63. My favorite business book of all time is experience.

Noah Kagan

#64. I have no regrets. I don't believe in looking back. What I am proudest of? Working really hard ... and achieving as much as I could.

Elena Kagan

#65. Suppose a state said that, Because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on procreation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both people are over the age of 55. Would that be constitutional?

Elena Kagan

#66. I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.

Robert Kagan

#67. Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant!

Elena Kagan

#68. I do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.

Elena Kagan

#69. Your mind simply can't focus forward and downward all at the same time.

Daryn Kagan

#70. Perhaps most important, judges will have goals. And because this is so, judges will often try to mold and steer the law in order to promote certain ethical values and achieve certain social ends. Such activity is not necessarily wrong or invalid.

Elena Kagan

#71. Medicine I know. you tell me what a pulsar is and I'll tell you whatever you need to know about the organ of Zucker-kandl.
Sulu made a polite scoffing noise and explained anyway, ...

Janet Kagan

#72. American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.

Elena Kagan

#73. Law matters, because it keeps us safe, because it protects our most fundamental rights and freedoms, and because it is the foundation of our democracy.

Elena Kagan

#74. Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Daryn Kagan

#75. There are few people who define the word, 'rock star' better than U2's Bono. He's revered the world over not just for leading one of the biggest bands ever, but for his very public work on behalf of the underprivileged in Africa.

Daryn Kagan

#76. Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.

Donald Kagan

#77. You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

Donald Kagan

#78. It is true that I have known Straussians almost all my life. And the one thing I was taught about them from the earliest age is that they are wrong.

Robert Kagan

#79. There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Elena Kagan

#80. In my view, America has never had the opportunity to enter paradise. Europe enjoys the paradise it enjoys, in part because the United States provides the overall security that allows Europe to live in a system where military power is not a major issue.

Robert Kagan

#81. It's not that there are no masters, but that there are many. And the job of the solicitor general is to balance those masters and to accommodate them all, each in their proper places, wisely and well and in so doing to represent the people of the United States.

Elena Kagan

#82. To ask whether it's nature or nurture, says Kagan, is like asking whether a blizzard is caused by temperature or humidity. It's the intricate interaction between the two that makes us who we are.

Susan Cain

#83. Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find - and there will be plenty.

Robert Kagan

#84. What my political views or my constitutional views are just doesn't matter.

Elena Kagan

#85. There have been 111 Justices in the Supreme Court of the United States. Only three have been women. If she is confirmed, Solicitor General Kagan will bring the Supreme Court to an historical high-water mark, with three women concurrently serving as Justices.

Patrick Leahy

#86. That was 1993 grunge in suburbia. This was 2003 hell in Harlem. (Dark City Lights)

Eve Kagan

#87. I can see that you are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

Donald Kagan

#88. The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people.

Elena Kagan

#89. The hard part is what separates good from great.

Noah Kagan

#90. If I am confirmed, I will commit to show Heller and the principles articulated in it the full measure of respect that is due to all constitution decisions of the court.

Elena Kagan

#91. The BEST way to get famous is make amazing stuff. That's it.

Noah Kagan

#92. The sign of a great man is that the closer you get, the greater he seems.

Israel Meir Kagan