The life we want is not merely the one we have chosen and made. It is the one we must be choosing and making

Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. We believe, apparently, in the infinite availability of finite resources.

The law is meant to work for justice. But people who know themselves know that, at some point, justice had better be mitigated by mercy. And you don't get to mercy by a legal principle. You get to mercy by way of imagination, sympathy, tenderness of heart - which are not weaknesses.

It may be that when we no longer know... which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since... I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies.

Don't pray for the rain to stop; pray for good luck fishing when the river floods.