society

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

What we see in people is determined, in large part, by what we expect to find.

It is not that we have a deficit of resources. We have a surplus of greed.

The rich are those who play to win. The middle class plays not to lose.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before and wiser than the one that comes after it.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

We have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us – the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary.