“Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.”

No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.

Justice at all costs’ is not justice.

It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

Whenever someone refers to me as someone “who happens to be black,” I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on.

As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.

As an entrepreneur in India put it: ‘Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself.

The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence.

Intellect is not wisdom.

Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.

Racism does not have a good track record. It’s been tried out for a long time and you’d think by now we’d want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.

The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.

The government is indeed an institution, but “the market” is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste.

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty.

Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

As a precaution, we’re making machines extremely heavy with very tiny legs.

If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn’t I don’t care.

Whatever happens, take responsibility.

My brain cannot process failure. It will not process failure

My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

If you take care of your workers they’ll take care of your business.