People have a deep need to be legislators, and the idea of autonomy has become very precious.

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.

We hate it when our friends become successful.

The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her story.

Sporting events like the Olympics have developed and maintained a clear message of promoting gender equality as an essential criterion in the success of any international event.

Death with honor is better than life... life with dishonor.

Fear first created the gods.

When you've got the Daytona 500 out there at stake and everything riding on the line, guys go for it, and the guys that go for it are the ones that are either going to win or they're going to wreck.

Instead of finding the needle in the haystack, we're making the haystack bigger.

In the ladies' room, Alice studied her image in the mirror. The reflected older woman's face didn't quite match the picture that she had of herself in her mind's eye." p 35

You wouldn't recognize me from one project to the next.

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight.