Perhaps the thing that makes humans truly unique on Earth is that we are never satisfied with our situation; maybe that is what's taken us so far.
The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.
My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldn't understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.
I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty.
I'm standing up thinking. Anybody who wants to listen is welcome. If not, I'm happy to see them go.
I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.
When my mother left her second husband, she wrote her autobiography and presented it to him for his approval.
I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand.
Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.
Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.
Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside.
When I was growing up, I always read horror books, while my sister read romance novels.
The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.
I'm still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing.
Knee-deep in the cosmic overwhelm, I’m stricken by the ricochet wonder of it all: the plain everythingness of everything, in cahoots with the everythingness of everything else. - From Diffraction (for Carl Sagan)
The negative aspects of Scottish Nationalism are a kind of aggressive complacency, that sort of boasting; but that's an expression of insecurity, I think, of a lack of confidence.
Perhaps pondering words is also a form of seeking justice. If a monologue can invite a chorus, then perhaps it can speak for others as well.
The problems of aging present an opportunity to rethink our social and personal lives in order to ensure the dignity and welfare of each individual.
It is natural for us, as human beings, to look forward. Our eyes naturally look ahead. In this sense, we are made for moving toward a goal.
The willingness to challenge hardships taps the power within human beings to transform even a place of tragedy into a stage for fulfilling one's mission.
Leave behind the passive dreaming of a rose-tinted future. The energy of happiness exists in living today with roots sunk firmly in reality's soil.
