I think we need government to play a part in having a health policy that makes nursing care available for the increasing numbers who are going to need it.

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.

Knowledge is no guarantee of good behavior, but ignorance is a virtual guarantee of bad behavior.

Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.

Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count; the examined life has global dimensions.

But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.

You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.

As human beings, we ought to be vulnerable. We shouldn't try to say that we can be self-sufficient or do everything that's necessary for a good life on our own, because we need other people.

Life is about more than earning a living, and if you're not in the habit of thinking about it, you can end up middle-aged or even older and shocked to realize that your life seems empty.

Business leaders love the humanities because they know that to innovate you need more than rote knowledge. You need a trained imagination.

Choice matters. You might have the opportunity to eat a nutritious diet, though you might choose to eat a lousy diet. What matters is the opportunity.

Change won’t happen because everyone wishes it happens. It happens only when people decide that we’ll never stop digging until we find our gold.

Each time you stare at a blank page, you end up staring at yourself.

I have always had the courage for the new things that life sometimes offers.

which is better - to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?

I believe that sexual assault - if this is possible - was even more underreported when I was in school.

When the American people get through with the English language, it will look as if it had been run over by a musical comedy.

Transsexualism is, basically, just another, more drastic twist on the male menopause.

The mark of a good hitter is someone who hits the ball hard, often. And if you run into a few home runs, that's fine.

I thought of all the times we'd been together, how I kept coming closer, then retreating, while he stayed right where he was. A constant in a world where few, if any, really existed.

The Crimea is not a disputed territory. Unlike the case of Georgia and South Ossetia, there has been no ethnic conflict there.