Against my will in the course of my travels the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.
We learned about gratitude and humility - that so many people had a hand in our success from the teachers who inspired us to the janitors who kept our school clean... and we were taught to value everyone's contribution and treat everyone with respect.
Throughout my career if I have done anything I have paid attention to every note and every word I sing - if I respect the song. If I cannot project this to a listener I fail.
We are more thoroughly an enlightened people with respect to our political interests than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.
It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete everybody will respect you.
Be peaceful be courteous obey the law respect everyone but if someone puts his hand on you send him to the cemetery.
Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
Everyone should be respected as an individual but no one idolized.
Religion is the idol of the mob it adores everything it does not understand.
Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society and in all that was necessary to this end every man had to take his part or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.
Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.
That means that every human being - without distinction of sex age race skin color language religion political view or national or social origin - possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity.
It's not just the effect of technology on the environment on religion on the economic structure on society on politics etc. It's that everything now exists in technology to the point where technology is the new and comprehensive host of nature of life.
I almost got a psychology degree I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn't make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion epistomology and astronomy... I took every interesting course I could find for nine years.
I travel around the world experiencing every language every religion... some places where there's just no reason to smile because their lives are so difficult.