If you don't like a place, maybe you don't know enough about it... Give a culture the benefit of your open mind.

Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate sourvenir is a broader perspective.

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.

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

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

Travel challenges truths that we were raised thinking were self-evident and God-given. Leaving home, we learn other people find different truths to be self-evident. We realize that it just makes sense to give everyone a little wiggle room.

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.