The question shouldn't be what we ought to do, but what we can do.

Democracy is not simply a question of structures. It is a state of mind. It is an activity.

I had been walking one afternoon in Scotland and thought: Why don't I just keep going? There was, I said, a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching across Asia.

I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.

This idea that failure is not an option: It makes failure invisible, inconceivable and inevitable.

The world isnt one way or another. Things can be changed very, very rapidly by someone with sufficient confidence, sufficient knowledge and sufficient authority.

Despite the dubious statistics … democracy is a thing of value for which we should be fighting.

If democracy is to be rebuilt … it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.

Religions . . . seem to avoid mountain passes.

I had a lot of romantic notions about what it would mean to cross Asia by foot.

In some sense, I'm a romantic. I like the idea of organic history and tradition.

For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints.

Talk about dance? Dance is not something to talk about. Dance is to dance.

The Number One Rule of Working Is: DO THE BEST WORK YOU CAN. Why do anything but your best? What's the point?

Despite what Washington thinks or does on this 15th anniversary, we the people will never forget those who perished and the lessons learned on Sept. 11, 2001.

There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is.

Make us eternal truths receive, And practice all that we believe: Give us thyself, that we may see The Father and the Son, by thee.

I may never let go of my wrath, my anger, but I will always have the last laugh.

When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.

There is indeed, perhaps, no better way to hold communion with the sea than sitting in the sun on the veranda of a fishermen's café