Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In fact, the likeliest reason why so many of us care so little about politics is that modern politicians makes us sad, hurt us deep down in ways that are hard even to name, much less talk about.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

The greatest sin is appearing naive or old-fashioned so that somebody can give you a sort of a very cool arch smile and devastate you with one extraordinarily crafted line that puts kind of a hole in your pretentious balloon.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

Real leaders are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.