The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement.

Human knowledge is never contained in just one person.

What makes human life meaningful? I still felt literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain.

Even if you are perfect the World isn't.

Literature not only illuminated another's experience, it provided, I believed, the richest material for moral reflection

Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job- not a calling.

A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form.

People often ask if it was calling. My answer always is yes.

Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job-- not a calling.

[H]e found poetry more comforting than Scripture—and his ability to forge from his life a cogent, powerful tale of living with death.

As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives -- everyone dies eventually -- but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.

Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic.

I'm not a parent myself, but I think the best solution at this point is to slap that child across the face. It won't stop crying, but at least now it'll be doing it for a good reason.

God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.

I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it's not necessarily ubiquitous.

Man is the being whose project it is to be God.

There’s no story that’s the start of itself.

As you have fewer and fewer voices in a democracy, in a free society, it's not good to limit the number of voices.

The biggest obstacle that you can have is all inside your head, so I try every day to be optimistic and keep dreaming about great things!

Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.

Begin today. Declare out loud to the universe that you are willing to let go of struggle and eager to learn through joy.