Disequilibrium is often instigated by the will to power, a sleepless drive in the human personality to control others, to force them to do what one wants, or not to do what one opposes.

You can actually herd cats. They can't be forced, of course. But if they sense something they want, if there enticed by something good, they'll follow, even in herds.

Moral action – humble and honest – is the tribute that power must at some point pay to reason.

In this era of public survival through continuous storytelling, people want someone who might surprise them.

He was rebuilt, reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose.

A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.

I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen

Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness.

A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom?

Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired.

This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes.

There are white n*ggers. I've seen a lot of white n*ggers in my time.

I don't really do very well when I'm sent somewhere. A lot of magazines want to send you somewhere to do something. They want you to stow away on a ship, or something like that.

If we never flattered ourselves we should have but scant pleasure.

I wish that food trucks could exist here in Chicago like they do in Brooklyn and in New York, where you're actually cooking off the truck.

I think I've gone through my life with the understanding that you've got to let go and you can't think that you're going to control your destiny.

Why does every flight attendant seem like they are going through a divorce?

Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don't have it. Maybe it's my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don't have it.

Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?

So as I thought about it, the most important "tool" you can have today in business is insatiable curiosity. The minute you lose it, you're dead.