“The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.”

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.

It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.

This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.

I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. Confused people can make no clear demands.

There’s a responsibility in being a person. It’s more than just taking up space where air would be.

And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.

People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.

No matter what you do, give it everything you have. Be the best, not the second best.

I will heighten my life by helping others heighten theirs.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, feed just one.

You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.

Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us; shedding light over this world can alone help us.

We can’t help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.