I have a New Year's tradition. I lay all my travel dreams on the table, sort them out, prioritize, and begin the process of turning those dreams into reality.

Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something is not to your liking, change your liking.

We're still a racist country, but we've come a long way since the civil rights eras and we are still a homophobic country, but we've come a long way in that regard. And we still got a war on marijuana and have come along in that regard.

Ideally, travel broadens our perspectives personally, culturally, and politically. Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colors.

If you can get conservatives to sit down for 20 minutes and listen to you on drug policy reform you might have a good chance to - if not convert them - at least respect your opinion.

It seems that the most fearful people in our country are those who don't travel and are metaphorically barricaded in America. If we all stayed home and built more walls and fewer bridges between us and the rest of the world, eventually we would have something to actually be fearful of.

A society has to make a choice: tolerate alternative lifestyles or build more prisons.