Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others.

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature; they distort it.

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.

Epitaphs for a gravestone: 'Please: no hooliganism'; or 'Es prohibe se hace agua aqui'; or 'No comment'.