Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen.

Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

What is most needed in Darfur is an international peacekeeping and protection presence, and this is what the Sudanese government most wants to avoid.

Success is not about who never fails. It is about who can spring - or even stagger - back up.

Violence against women isn't cultural, it's criminal. Equality cannot come eventually, it's something we must fight for now.

Without investing in the rule of law for the poor, none of the other investments we make will be sustainable.

It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter.

My basic feeling about military intervention is that it should be a last resort, undertaken only to stave off large-scale bloodshed.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

I like to think that as I get older I'm getting better at spending time with people who have qualities that make them worth spending time with.

Historical hypocrites have themselves carried out the very human rights abuses that they suddenly decide warrant intervention elsewhere.

Who is the ‘mother’ of ‘Knowledge (Gnan)’? It is ‘Understanding’ (samaj). Where can ‘understanding’ be acquired from? It is acquired from Gnani Purush (The Enlightened one).

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the second chance were offered me.

I watched a rose-bud very long Brought on by dew and sun and shower, Waiting to see the perfect flower: Then when I thought it should be strong It opened at the matin hour And fell at even-song.

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

Recently, someone asked me if I believed in astrology. He seemed somewhat puzzled when I explained that the reason I don't is that I'm a Gemini.

Saint Christopher, who said, Where can I get a Frank Sinatra medal? Never got a dinner!

And death? I don't fear death. I dread the absence of it.

Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.