“To reduce the sum of our existence to a competitive struggle for advantage among more than two hundred nations is not clear-eyed but myopic. People and nations compete, but that is not all that they do.”

The greatest thrill in my life was to represent the United States of America.

I once experimented with meditation, cleared my mind, and immediately remembered a phone call I had to make; that was that.

The conservatives saw the Fascist leader as someone they could hide behind, manipulate, and, when convenient, replace.

Good guys don’t always win, especially when they are divided and less determined than their adversaries. The desire for liberty may be ingrained in every human breast, but so is the potential for complacency, confusion, and cowardice. And losing has a price.

Well, the thing that I learned as a diplomat is that human relations ultimately make a huge difference.

Repeat a lie often enough and it begins to sound as if it must—or at least might—be so.

How can one be bored in a world where a billion examples of human ingenuity, peculiarity, pigheadedness, and compassion are on regular view?

This was how twentieth-century Fascism began: with a magnetic leader exploiting widespread dissatisfaction by promising all things.

The real question is: who has the responsibility to uphold human rights? The answer to that is: everyone.

The real question is: who has the responsibility to uphold human rights? The answer to that is: everyone.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

Hate, emotionalism, and frustration are not policies.

It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.

This is the first rule of deception: repeated often enough, almost any statement, story, or smear can start to sound plausible. The Internet should be an ally of freedom and a gateway to knowledge; in some cases, it is neither.

Decades ago, George Orwell suggested that the best one-word description of a Fascist was bully.

The more extreme advocates from one side helped to validate the arguments of extremists on the other.

Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, god-like feature that only the special among us will ever taste, it’s something that truly exists in all of us.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

It is important to make a child aware of the existence of a weird creature like a water spider that breathes through its backside.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

Men and women bear God’s image within and are the object of His infinite love, in whatever condition they were called into existence.

Men and women bear God’s image within and are the object of His infinite love, in whatever condition they were called into existence.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.