Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier.

Smiling at someone can have significant health consequences.

Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.

When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.

For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance.

The idea that traumatic residues—or unresolved stories—can be inherited is groundbreaking.

The unconscious mind is a vast repository of experiences and associations that sorts things out much faster than the slow-moving conscious mind.

Buddhism has a term for the happiness we feel at someone else’s success or good fortune. Sympathetic joy, as it is known, invites us to celebrate for others.

Even as we recognize our resentment, bitterness, or jealousy, we can also honor our own wish to be happy, to feel free.

The more we practice sympathetic joy, the more we come to realize that the happiness we share with others is inseparable from our own happiness.

I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.

You love me so much, you want to put me in your pocket. And I should die there smothered.

I’d rather protect a living, breathing person I can touch than some shogun above the clouds I’ll never see.

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.

We must oppose programs that would take food from the mouths of younger generations to buy prescription drugs for old people, and we must do it... for the children.

If there is one characteristic that signals creativity in business, it might be follow-through.

My father was very strict, but mostly I just didn't know how to behave on a date.

A lower-paying job can still help you advance your career.

No matter how bad you think you have it, there's always - always somebody who's got it way, way worse.

We do not have time to play at "oppositions" at "conferences." We will keep our political opponents... whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison.