"The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up."

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"

"Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything."

"I believe in something. But I don't believe that anything can hold a grudge for long enough to condemn its creation to eternal punishment. Nobody can hold a grudge that long, even God."

"Human beings have survived for millennia because most of us make good decisions about our health most of the time."

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."

"It is a radiant truth that the river of time washes away kings and empires, leaving only virtue intact — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it."