“Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude – not a punishment for making money.”

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

The longing for a destiny is no nowhere stronger than in our romantic life. All too often forced to share our bed with those who cannot fathom our soul, can we not be forgiven if we believe ourselves fated to stumble one day upon the man or woman of our dreams.

When work is not going well, it’s useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers – and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.

We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water.

Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

Curiosity takes ignorance seriously – and is confident enough to admit when it’s in the dark. It is aware of not knowing. And then it sets out to do something about it.

Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life.

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains.

Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.

It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.

I grew up in Minnesota, where we treasure our tradition of civic engagement – and our record of having the nation’s highest voter participation.

The Civic Culture (and The Civic Culture Revisited) remains the best study of comparative political culture in our time.