Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating.
No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
It is high time that the Arab world's professed desire for peace is matched by responsible action, and not more of the same equivocation.
But the cause for which we fought was higher; our thought wider... That thought was our power.
In the past a leader was a boss. Today's leaders must be partners with their people... they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.
I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not and end up going extinct. We'd be the laughingstock of the aliens of the cosmos if that were the case.
What the Olympics and other mega-events have shown is that the significant investment required to host an international games successfully has the power to transform a region, and even a nation.
Granted, I'm someone who loves words. I've always loved poetry - so it's suited to me.
Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.
How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.
I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies.
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
I think poetry can help children deal with the other subjects on the curriculum by enabling them to see a subject in a new way.
All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
For a poet to depict a poet in poetry is a hazardous experiment; in regarding one's own trade a sense of humour and a little wholesome cynicism are not amiss.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.
Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
And how can poetry stand up against its new conditions? Its position is perfectly precarious.
