There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbour in the end.

Every single ancient wisdom and religion will tell you the same thing - don't live entirely for yourself, live for other people. Don't get stuck inside your own ego, because it will become a prison in no time flat.

The modern world is not given to uncritical admiration. It expects its idols to have feet of clay and can be reasonably sure that the press and camera will report their exact dimensions.

It is very much easier for a rich man to invest and grow richer than for the poor man to begin investing at all. And this is also true of nations.

It is a fact of history that those who seek to withdraw from its great experiments usually end up being overwhelmed by them.

It is only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision...That is the sort of time we live in now. We...live in an epoch in which the solid ground of our preconceived ideas shakes daily under our uncertain feet.

in modern society, fear of unemployment remains the darkest of the shadows thrown by the past. In an industrial order, a man out of work is almost a man out of life.