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.

... while infants will sync with the human voice regardless of language, they later become habituated to the rhythms of their own language and culture ... ... humans are tied to each other by hierarchies of rhythms that are culture-specific and expressed through language and body movement.

When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brainthat is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious--to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.

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.

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

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

We are only peripherally tied to the lives of others. It takes a long long time for us to become deeply involved with others, and for some this never happens.