People don't just want to feel satisfied. They actually want to act.

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.

Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.

Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count; the examined life has global dimensions.

But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.

You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.

As human beings, we ought to be vulnerable. We shouldn't try to say that we can be self-sufficient or do everything that's necessary for a good life on our own, because we need other people.

Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.

Business leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.

Choice matters. You might have the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity.

Precedence exists in humanity as it does with law.

If we can somehow survive this world, we would've achieved something in this world.

The mind is complicated and you can't trace the roots of its processes, but there is something about mathematical and algorithmic patterns that I like to recognize in things.

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with Annie.

In addition to my cousin, there were 30 or 40 guys I grew up with who became firefighters as well. So, I've been around firefighters all my life.

Quiet talk is the language of love. It is the language of peace. It is the language of God.

Those who believe in our ability do more than stimulate us. They create for us an atmosphere in which it becomes easier to succeed.

I thought that my life would be spent working in a bookstore, teaching community college, and making music in my spare time that no one would be willing to listen to.

No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.