The violent have been victorious for most of history because they kindled the fear with which everyone is born.

Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.

Change the way you think, and you are halfway to changing the world.

Everything I am going to say to you is the child of a conversation. [...] That is the aspect of conversation that particularly excites me: how conversation changes the way you see the world, and even changes the world.

The French have made conversation their claim to civilisation.

Never before have humans been so ambitious, have they thought that they could be much more than their parents were.

The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person.