If sports are the toy department of life, then the NFL is the FAO Schwartz of sports.

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

The anonymity of the city is one of its strengths as well as - carried too far - one of its weaknesses.

We end up with the contradictory picture of a society that appears to throw its doors wide open to women, but translates her every step towards success as having been damaging.

No society has ever yet been able to handle the temptations of technology to mastery, to waste, to exuberance, to exploration and exploitation... We have to learn to cherish this earth and cherish it as something that's fragile, that's only one, it's all we have... We have to use our scientific knowledge to correct the dangers that have come from science and technology.

I've been married three times - and each time I married the right person.

I did not write it [Coming of Age in Samoa] as a popular book, but only with the hope that it would be intelligible to those who might make the best use of its theme, that adolescence need not be the time of stress and strain which Western society made it; that growing up could be freer and easier and less complicated; and also that there were prices to pay for the very lack of complication I found in Samoa - less intensity, less individuality, less involvement with life.