“It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.”

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world – a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one – is to fix yourself.

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.

Always place your becoming above your current being.

Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong?

Dare, instead, to be dangerous. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express (or at least become aware of) what would really justify your life.

If society is corrupt, but not the individuals within it, then where did the corruption originate? How is it propagated? It’s a one-sided, deeply ideological theory.

Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.

If you fulfill your obligations every day you don’t need to worry about the future.

If you are not willing to be a fool, you can’t become a master.

Begin by treating yourself as if you were someone you were responsible for helping.

We cannot navigate, without something to aim at and, while we are in this world, we must always navigate.

Dreams shed light on the dim places where reason itself has yet to voyage.

Don’t underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are irresistible forces, able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles into traversable pathways and expanding opportunities.

Consult your resentment. It’s a revelatory emotion, for all its pathology.

There are so many ways that things can fall apart, or fail to work altogether, and it is always wounded people who are holding it together.