Regard as your most faithful friends, not those who praise everything you say or do, but those who criticize your mistakes.
Warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.
The greater the tension, the greater is the potential.
For better to come, good must stand aside.
Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power.
Commendation heals; condemnation destroys.
What is really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power over men. . . this power. . . is in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves.
Dead men are not friends to living men, and give them no gifts. (Ghan-buri-Ghan, of allies during war)
When a woman extends her hand for you to shake it, then you shake her hand. You do not turn it up and kiss it. And it is just so creepy. Because, you know, I handed it at this angle. I handed it at the handshake angle and so I'm not giving it to you to do whatever you want with it. I'm not loaning it to you. It's like if somebody borrowed your lawnmower and you're assuming they're going to use it to mow their lawn. You don't want to find out later they put it in the ocean!
I now know that to do a worthwhile family history I must interpret the past without falling into either demonizing or unquestioning acceptance. . . . As a playwright, what I object to right now is any form of fundamentalism, whether it's nationalistic, religious or ethnic. . . . I think it is ridiculous - and fundamentalist, by the way - to say that I am not changed by the culture around me.