No one has been able to define or synthesize that precarious, splendid, and perhaps untidy instant when the creative process begins. This is what the uniqueness of the artist is all about. The transcendent right of the artist is the right to create even though he may not always know what he is doing.

Fortunately or otherwise we live at a time when the average individual has to know several times as much in order to keep informed as he did only thirty or forty years ago. Being "educated" today requires not only more than a superficial knowledge of the arts and sciences, but a sense of inter-relationship such as is taught in few schools. Finally, being "educated" today, in terms of the larger needs, means preparation for world citizenship; in short, education for survival.

No one really knows enough to be a pessimist.

The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.

The conquest of war and the pursuit of social justice... must become our grand preoccupation and magnificent obsession.

Pessimism is a waste of time.

Hope, purpose and determination are not merely mental states. They have electrochemical connections that affect the immune system.