History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.

We are very cruelly trapped between what we would like to be and what we actually are. And we cannot possibly become what we would like to be until we are willing to ask ourselves just why the lives we lead on this continent are mainly so empty, so tame, and so ugly.

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

It is hard for anyone under twenty to realise that death has already assigned them a number, which is going to come up one day.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them -- to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever.