I suspect the secret of personal attraction is locked up in our unique imperfections, flaws and frailties.

The copycat effects of media violence, similar to those previously attributed to westerns, radio serials and comic books, are easy to exaggerate.

Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational.

So, if falling crime rates coincide with the rise of violent video games and increasing violence on TV and at the cinema, should we conclude that media violence is causing the drop in crime rates?

Actually, I can't imagine anything more tedious than a perfect person, especially if it was someone who also demanded perfection from me.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

The thing we need most is each other.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

It's Australian to do such things because, however uncivilised they may seem, it's human to do them.

One reason we resist making deliberate choices is that choice equals change and most of us, feeling the world is unpredictable enough, try to minimise the trauma of change in our personal lives.

On average, Australians watch more than three hours of television a day, compared with 12 minutes a day spent by the average couple talking to each other.

Just breathe and believe.

Be happy when people envy you, you are on the right path

I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

If you want to do something then be the best.

The theatre, when all is said and done, is not life in miniature, but life enormously magnified, life hideously exaggerated.

Time-wasting activities are the dessert. Oftentimes discoveries are made through the back door.

Ideas are nothing, doing is everything

Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul force or the power of the godhead within us.

I'm not against vodka - they just asked us. They put out some story about us entertaining international celebrities with vodka, which of course wasn't true.

Give a man or woman back his self-respect, and in most cases-not all, but most-you also give back that person's ability to think with at least some clarity.