Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.

We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.

I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.

Smug respectability, like the poor, we've had with us always. Today, however, ... such obtuseness is an indulgence we can no longer afford. The computer, nuclear energy for better or worse, and sudden, simultaneous influences upon everyone's TV screen have raised the ante and the risk considerably.

I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.

My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat'.