I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head.

If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?

We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.

We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters' lengthening flight.

Boys don't make passes at female smart asses.

If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct.

A toy has no gender and no idea of whether a girl or boy is playing with it.

If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.

If knowledge is power, clandestine knowledge is power squared; it can be withheld, exchanged, and leveraged.

Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.

No labourer in the world is expected to work for room, board, and love -except the housewife.

Those who know you don’t need explanations, those who don’t won't believe you.

Being clingy may work for puppies, but not for you.

Sometimes changing the world is as simple as changing the way you look at it.

Make this moment the moment of truth about yourself. You have been selling short all of your life.

Computers themselves, and software yet to be developed, will revolutionize the way we learn.

I'm very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers.

We should not be too familiar with the lower orders or with women.

He who merely knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them.

He who would reproach an author for obscurity should look into his own mind to see whether it is quite clear there. In the dusk the plainest writing is illegible.

Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.