It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up.

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.

We need not take refuge in supernatural gods to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.

The most stable, and therefore, the most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.

I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.

Obviously the most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.

If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.

In a word, growth and improvement can come through pain and conflict.

Perhaps adjustment and stabilization, while good because it cuts your pain, is also bad because development towards a higher ideal ceases?

Physics isn't the most important thing. Love is.

Jesus.""I thought you were Jewish."He pressed his lips together for a second before looking at me. "Fine. I'll say Moses. Or Abraham. Happy?""I doubt Jesus is.

If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.

The wise hand doth not all that the foolish mouth speakes. [The wise hand doth not all that the foolish mouth speaks.]

If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.

All things such as grass and trees are soft and supple in life. At their death they are withered and dry.

Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other?

I'm always on the lookout for projects with a strong moral and inspirational core.

If you try your best, you can always be better.

I'm very wary of fawning too much over heroes. There's an old adage that heroes are best kept at arm's length, and in a few instances in my life, that's been true.