"Peter held up the book he had been reading: 'Moby-Dick; or, The Whale'.'To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure this is English,' Peter said. 'It's taken me most of today to get through a page."

"When we don’t care about what our government is doing, we are also saying to the next generation that we are not interested in the possible burdens that we are passing on to them."

"[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. Iv, p. 327)."

"You can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons; the next, by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest, by their preference for the discussion of ideas."

"I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same."

"If you see an old man talking to himself, he might not be a fool or crazy. He might be sharing a conversation with the past, warmed by a memory he need not reveal."

"Our culture has bred consumers and addicts. We eat too much, buy too much, and want too much. We set ourselves on the fruitless mission of filling the gaping hole within us with material things. Blindly, we consume more and more, believing we are hungry for more food, status, or money, yet really we are hungry for connection."