“Teachers deserve respect," I explain. "Why do they get it for free, when everyone else has to earn it?”

“When people criticize me for not having any respect for existing structures and institutions, I protest. I say I give institutions and structures and traditions all the respect that I think they deserve. That's usually mighty little, but there are things that I do respect. They have to earn that respect. They have to earn it by serving people. They don't earn it just by age or legality or tradition.”

“He only knows great teachers can bore into someone else's mind like this -- only they have this kind of power. Maybe that's why teachers are paid so little: what they earn has more power than money.”

“He's earned a lifetime of peace and happiness, but some people never get what they deserve. That's why there are saints in gutters and sadists in palaces.”

“I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we don't earn it, we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is - a way of earning the future.”

“Part of liberation is being free to do your own thing and letting everyone else be free to do theirs.”