We cannot be a source for strength unless we nurture our own strength.

If we seek to be loved - if we expect to be loved - this cannot be accomplished; we will be dependent and grasping not genuinely loving.

I guess if you want to know one single thing I'm about, it's that I'm against easy answers.

To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours. To be organized and efficient, to live wisely, we must daily delay gratification and keep an eye on the future; yet to live joyously we must also possess the capacity, when it is not destructive, to live in the present and act spontaneously. In other words, discipline itself must be disciplined. The type of discipline required to discipline discipline is what I call balancing.

The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.

Although I was raised in a profoundly secular home, I had a belief, an awareness of God, from as far back as I can remember.

Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.