None of us has the power to make someone else love us. But we all have the power to give away love, to love other people. And if we do so, we change the kind of world we live in.

It is because you have the typical American habit of seeing everything as a test. You see the mountain as your enemy and you set out to defeat it. So, naturally, the mountain fights back and it is stronger than you are. We do not see the mountain as our enemy to be conquered. The purpose of our climb is to become one with the mountain and so it lifts us up and carries us along.

You don't become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something.

I said in an interview at the time that God's job is not to make sick people healthy. That's the doctors' job. God's job is to make sick people brave.

One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick.

We do ourselves and others a disservice when we make old age something to be feared...The longer we live, the more life we possess.

When a mentally retarded child is born, the religious question we often ask is, "Why does God let this happen?" The better question to pose is to ask, "What kind of community should we be so that mental retardation isn't a barrier to the enjoyment of one's full humanity?"