If we dare to come closer to our fellow human beings, we will be able to see and understand them better.

Knowledge of other people's beliefs and ways of thinking must be used to build bridges, not to create conflicts.

We have to find compromises. That's the way it is in Norway.

Extremists and populist movements are exploiting people's fear of those who are not like us. We can see the consequences in the form of terrorism and racially motivated violence.

We must never relinquish the vision of a humane society and a humane world.

We have a good life when we manage to live with both satisfied and unsatisfied needs, when we are not obsessed by what is beyond our reach.

Terrorism is contempt for human dignity.

Human dignity is independent of national borders. We must always defend the interests of the poor and the persecuted in other countries.

We must remember that politics is more than a power game. The core of politics in my view is to serve our citizens, to serve our fellow human beings.

Don't believe those who claim that only left wing parties really care about employment.

Unfortunately, religion, like patriotism, is easy to misuse for political purposes.

The more we understand the simplicity of life, the less complex we shall live.

Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.

I do not think I should care to go on worshipping a Madonna even if she did wink. One cannot make much out of a wink. We want something more than that from the object of our adoration.

Fondnesse it were for any being free, To covet fetters, though they golden bee.

Like all revolutions, the surrealist revolution was a reversion, a restitution, an expression of vital and indispensable spiritual needs.

Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.

Nine to Five is actually one of my favorite movies. I watched it a thousand times when I was a child, literally a thousand times.

People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least while the music lasts.

You get what you earn.

The most colossal display of wise, inspiring, and humorous metaphors ever exhibited in one place.