The real violence is the violence we do to ourselves when we’re too afraid to be who we really are.

The highest virtue is to lead others to the understanding of truth.

With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

Innovation in energy must be balanced with responsibility—progress cannot come at the expense of the planet.

I'm interested in transcendence, in going beyond limits.