Respectful communication under conflict or opposition is an essential and truly awe-inspiring ability.

A polite enemy is just as difficult to discredit, as a rude friend is to protect.

People use words to do battle and to hurt one another terribly, tragically and even mortally.

When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak be our silent statement.

We must quit thinking we know everything, and quit placing "knowledge" over kindness and compassion.

The dreamer's untamed eye sees beyond the illusions to the heart of what is real.

There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.

Love only serves and does not calculate.

If you do not like a certain behavior in others, look within yourself to find the roots of what discomforts you.

Materialism is an identity crisis.

Life moves forward. The old leaves wither, die and fall away, and the new growth extends forward into the light.

Education is that component which brings in a meaningful relationship between the happenings around us and how our senses experience them.

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.

My shoes I got to pick. I chose worn-out red flats. I figured I should make it clear from the start that I wasn’t princess material.

Obama wants to be thought of as the president who freed us from foreign oil. But if he doesn't show some political courage, he may well be remembered as the president who cooked the planet.

Ethics to me is very important.

Miserere is about redemption, and the triumph of our best impulses over our worst. It's also about swords, monsters, chases, ghosts, magic, [and] court intrigues. It's also really, really good.

You have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled that of being pleasant.

It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.

If you tell the same story five times, it's true.

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak.