The best reason for exposing oneself to foreign ways is to generate a sense of vitality and awareness - an interest in life which can come only when one lives through the shock of contrast and difference.

I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.

Culture hides more than it reveals, and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants.

. . . how man evolved with such an incredible reservoir of talent and such fantastic diversity isn't completely understood . . . he knows so little and has nothing to measure himself against.

Now, you can't tell me, we have the only God in the whole world. You can't tell me that nobody else has God.

Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.

By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind.