A dream is what makes people love life even when it is painful.

One of the great ambitions is to discover the diversity of the world, to discover who inhabits the world.

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

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 brain is full of lonely ideas, begging you to make some sense of them, to recognize them as interesting. The lazy brain just files them away in old pigeonholes, like a bureaucrat who wants an easy life. The lively brain picks and chooses and creates new works of art out of ideas.

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