My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

Let us give publicity to H.I.V./AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and say somebody has died because of H.I.V./AIDS, and people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary.

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.

Politicians just do an aerial survey of disasters. Genuine leaders carry out relief measures on ground zero.

It is only so long as a man can retain the child in him that life can be free from those dark shadows which leave inevitable furrows on a man’s forehead.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today. 

Our conscience is like an alarm bell.

Haze is the veil that filters the beauty of nature.

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

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Whether you call it Buddhism or other religion, self-discipline, that's important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.