Unless you listen, people are weazened in your presence; they become about a third of themselves. Unless you listen, you can't know anybody. Oh, you will know facts and what is in the newspapers and all of history, perhaps, but you will not know one single person. You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

the death of any loved parent is an incalculable lasting blow. Because no one ever loves you again like that.

we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.

Why should we all use our creative power....? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.

Science and vivisection make no appeal to a theological idea, much less a political one. You can argue with a theologian or a politician, but doctors are sacrosanct. They know; you do not. Science has its mystique much more powerful than any religion active today.