Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.

Almost every successful person begins with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.

Much of life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not, and your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure.

One of the things this world is finding is that emotion is the basis of reason. We really have to trust our emotions, which are much smarter than our reason in some ways.

The brain is not the mind. It is probably impossible to look at a map of brain activity and predict or even understand the emotions, reactions, hopes and desires of the mind.

Civility is the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation.

It’s only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help you going forward?

It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most.

Friendship allows you to see your own life but with a second sympathetic self.

Our emotions tell us what to value. They're like a little GPS system: Go that way. Don't go that way.

The daily activity that contributes most to happiness is having dinner with friends. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less.

Sir Bedevere: "Tell me, what do you do with witches?" Crowd: "Burn, burn them up!" Sir Bedevere: "And what do you burn apart from witches?" Villager: "More witches!

I don’t like people who are late.

Democracy works when people claim it as their own

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing

Even the most complex problem is resolved in the end. Because if there's a question, there also is an answer.

More connections to more devices means more vulnerabilities.

Time has a wonderful way of weeding out the trivial.

You have a little bit of feeling for everyone you play.

I've always wanted to be able to let myself go over the edge

The devil will let a preacher prepare a sermon if it will keep him from preparing himself.