By listening, by caring, by playing you back to yourself, friends ratify your better instincts and endorse your unique worth. Friends validate you.

There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.

Being a pathfinder is to be willing to risk failure and still go on.

The fundamental steps of expansion that will open a person, over time, to the full flowering of his or her individuality are the same for both genders. But men and women are rarely in the same place struggling with the same questions at the same age.

Transformation also means looking for ways to stop pushing yourself so hard professionally or inviting so much stress.

According to the prevailing mythology, to be younger is to be better; therefore, we should expect to find young people in the majority of those who reflect high well-being... In fact, the one finding that registered more consistently and emphatically than any other in the course of my research was this: Older is better.

Democratization is not democracy; it is a slogan for the temporary liberalization handed down from an autocrat. Glasnost is not free speech; only free speech, constitutionally guaranteed, is free speech.