Almost all of us long for peace and freedom; but very few of us have much enthusiasm for the thoughts, feelings, and actions that make for peace and freedom.

It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy.

Every civilization is, among other things, an arrangement for domesticating the passions and setting them to do useful work.

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.