The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.

We must become masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another person determine whether we will be rude or gracious, elated or depressed is to give control of ourselves. The only true possession is self possession.

Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil", it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.

Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.

When we inform, we lead from strength; when we communicate, we lead from weakness—and it is precisely this confession of mortality that engages the ears, heads and hearts of those we want to enlist as allies in a common cause.

Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.

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