If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

What is much harder to handle is the sense that you have to live up to the mark someone else has set for you. The grades become too important, the competition too frantic, the fear of disappointing those who believe in you turns into an overwhelming nightmare.

The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.

We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."

It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall; but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.

Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.