To become romantic artists, we must pierce the armor that hides our hearts, and the piercing is not comfortable.

Obviously, our political system is profoundly corrupted by, among other things, the influence of money. But, at a deeper level, the current structure is flawed because it looks to citizens for only two things - votes and money. I don't think we will see any healing until citizens are viewed in a whole new way.

We want spiritual principles to be more than beautiful abstractions; we want them to actually transform our lives.

The historian Arthur Schlesinger has pointed out that people tend to get interested in politics again every 30 years. The universe moves in cycles of three. The number figures in everything from Pythagoras's theory that the universe is based on three to the Father-the-Son-and-the-Holy- Ghost to the three-sided pyramidal shapes that intersect in the Jewish Star of David. The notion of the mystical three, metaphysically, spiritually, and even politically, is quite interesting to me.

A hero is someone who stands in the community and speaks their hopes and speaks their passion. That's almost an act of heroism nowadays because higher consciousness is so trivialized.

What is happening today is that there are millions of children who are not lifted up to the first rung of the ladder. Then they are condemned when they don't know how to climb from there.

From a mind filled with infinite love comes the power to create infinite possibilities. We have the power to think in ways that reflect and attract all the love in the world. Such thinking is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a process we work toward, but a choice available to us in any instant.