Every rule in the book can be broken, except one - be who you are, and become all you were meant to be.

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

But what is significant is that if you don't want to like and accept somebody, one excuse is as good as another. The objective facts don't matter, and the reasons are never as ‘reasonable' as we like to think they are.

Take away grievances from some people and you remove their reasons for living; most of us are nourished by hope, but a considerable minority get psychic nutrition from their resentments, and would waste away purposelessly without them.

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

Knowledge fills a large brain; it merely inflates a small one.

Ignorance per se is not nearly as dangerous as ignorance of ignorance.