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Without passion there is no art, only technique.

They could not see the effort which went into the art, and would consequently grow bored with it more quickly.

If you concern yourself with telling or showing people how interesting you are, you will at best provoke a temporary response of polite interest until even that gives way to annoyance. If you let people find it out for themselves, you become a real source of fascination.

“These accomplishments are what make a home comfortable.”

Melody said, “I thought that a home was made comfortable by those who live in it and their regard for one another.”

“This is true, Miss Melody, but if one presumes the affection which should be in all homes, then those homes which are most comfortable are also those which possess an understanding and appreciation for the arts.”

In our Gaian world, everything is connected to and influences everything else.

For a while now I have concerned myself with engaging people’s beliefs. A large part of me wishes to have people retain a scepticism about what I do and apply that to other areas in life where our beliefs are manipulated in ugly ways.

What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?

The appreciation of a painting or a piece of music, for example, or even falling in love, is all about our subjectivity. But to decide that the entire universe operates in such a way, let alone to go to war because we are so convinced we are right that others must agree with us or die, that surely should demand a higher level of argument than 'It's true because I really, really feel it is.

Kyoto questions the philosophies underpinning societies such as America and Australia, which cling to the myth of limitless growth.

Science is unusual in that it is cumulative. It is a system built over time, wherein useful information is retained and ideas that simply don't stand up are discarded, based on the confirmation of knowledge through testing.

The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a folly" that was associated with the unruly ignorance of an urban mob.

Well aware of both the continuity and contingency of human affairs, Adams and Madison searched the works of Tacitus and Voltaire and Locke like carpenters rummaging through their assortment of tools, knowing that all the pediments were jury-rigged, all the provisional, all the alliances temporary.