Failure is the foundation of truth. It teaches us what isn't true, and that is a great beginning. To fear failure is to fear the possibility of truth.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.

Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.

We need never be bound by the limitations of our previous or current thinking, nor are we ever locked into being the person we used to be, or think we are.

Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.

Entire lives aren’t lessons, but there are lessons in lives.

Reality, no matter how utopian, seems to be something people need to frequently take a holiday from.

The White House is now essentially a TV performance.

I am defeated, and know it, if I meet any human being from whom I find myself unable to learn anything.

Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.

Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.

There is always someone out there working harder than you, and you may be standing next to him or her in your next competition.

The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics.