Two individuals, conversing honestly, can be inspired by the feeling that they are engaged in a joint enterprise, aiming at inventing an art which has not been tried before.

The past is what provides us with the building blocks. Our job today is to create new buildings out of them.

The English reputation for humour is a way by which people avoid revealing themselves and have superficial relationships, so that you can engage in banter without making yourself vulnerable.

Forks and spoons have probably done more to reconcile people who cannot agree than guns and bombs ever did

To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction.

The Renaissance… was based on a new idea of the importance of the individual. But this was a fragile foundation, because individuals depended on constant applause and admiration to sustain them. There is a shortage of applause in the world, and there is not enough respect to go around.

The institution of marriage, if you look at it over many centuries, has come and gone.