I keep coming back to the phrase "Dance with the system" - not just march onwards no matter what happens.

People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.

Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.

If you were disabled in Russia, you had to re-register every year, and it took up to six months to re-register, so people who lost limbs in Afghanistan had to prove that their leg hadn't grown back.

Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems.

There are always pressures on decision-makers other than just what is right or what is wrong.

Lots of people in the open system are very determined to try and strengthen evidence-based policy.

To be effective at selling ideas, at being a lobbyist, influencing other people, you have to be very sure of yourself.

I see [activists] getting really angry that people won't just do what the evidence tells them, and that's not very helpful. You need to actually think why that is.

There's no point in just hankering for the big trade unions of the 1950s or '60s.

I sound like a church nut, but look at the role of the churches in the civil rights movement in the States. People are brought together in other ways that can become drivers of change.

You cats mind if I make it a trio?' he asked me, and it was not a huge surprise that a dude of his appearance was speaking in Jazz Voice.

Vanity might be a "sin" according to some lights, but he thought in measured doses it was one of life's allowable simple pleasures. It helped everyone get through their days.

I want to be the star in your diary" -Shawn, Fade to White

I heard you laughing, ' Jack said. He wanted to say something about the quality of that terrible laughter, but he did not know how to begin. So he said, ' I've never heard anyone laugh like you do.

Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.

Second order effects, such as belief in belief, makes fanaticism.

I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation, & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.

Then, when people saw you strolling around at high noon holding your rosary beads, they’d think, ‘Well, that can’t be a vampire.

There's been a lot of really cool stuff that's happened to me throughout my career, and I remember everything, but I don't think I savored every moment of it like I should have or like I do now.