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Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. It's amazing to me how much we do, but how little time we spend reflecting on what we just did.

Everybody wants to be somebody but nobody wants to be just anybody.

Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances.

Help him by helping him resist your help.

“‘Truth is cheap, but information costs.’ I can’t remember who said that.”

“Vince What’s-His-Name,” said Sam. “Died in a terrorist raid or something. I thought you said all information should be free.”

“It should. It isn’t. Knowledge is power. But power corrupts. Which means the Age of Fast Information is an extremely corrupt age in which to live.”

“Aren’t they all?” Sam asked him.

Over many years of work all over the world, I've learned that if we organize in the same way that the rest of life does, we develop the skills we need: we become resilient, adaptive, aware, and creative. We enjoy working together. And life's processes work everywhere, no matter the culture, group, or person, because these are basic dynamics shared by all living beings.

It gets tricky here, but it’s always seemed to be that sanity is, or can be, as relative as anything else. Sacrifice an animal to Zeus and predict the future from the formation of its entrails—do that as a general in ancient Greece hoping for victory in a coming battle and you’re prudent. Do it today and you’re a clinical paranoid and a mean one, too. Sanity, like customs and manners, seems to have a strong basis in the accepted standards of a particular time and place.

“Truth and information are not the same thing. I promise you that’s a fact.”

“So you told yourself. But you have to admit that they do coincide often enough to let us all get around in the world safely.”

Fusion power we licked; static cling has us on the ropes. It’s a funny world.

Maybe it’s better to be half of something wonderful than a whole nothing at all.

Some people gain freedom by trading one form of bondage for another.

There is an old-fashioned word for the body of skills that emotional intelligence represents: character.