Sign language is the equal of speech, lending itself equally to the rigorous and the poetic, to philosophical analysis or to making love.

In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.

The power of music to integrate and cure. . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.

My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.

Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.

We see with the eyes, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.

People will make a life in their own terms, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting and full as our world.

If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.

Language, that most human invention, can enable what, in principle, should not be possible. It can allow all of us, even the congenitally blind, to see with another person’s eyes.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

Perseverance....It sometimes makes you look like a foolWorking at something that that doesn't look cool.Never mind if people mock you from their stoolWhen you are enthroned they will drool!

I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.

The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things.

"... he had understood, better than anyone ... the beauty that grew out of the simple knowledge that everything, no matter how small or large it might be, was a perfect example of what it was."

If you are fully aware in the moment, there is only love.

Presidents have to be very organized to govern successfully, and solo artists rarely succeed.

My imagination is more tweaked by imagining the lives of the people who were there before us. I don't need to give myself the willies. I'm quite good at that - I can freak myself out wherever I am.

You do not notice changes in what is always before you.

Fortune raises up and fortune brings low both the man who fares well and the one who fares badly; and there is no prophet of the future for mortal men.

Saying that all documentaries are the same is like saying all foreign films are the same.