“Most of us care about one another. Human beings have considerably more in common with one another than they do differences. One’s religion, political persuasion, family, financial and social status, or vocation does not hamper the common thread of personal decency running through most of humankind.”

“Personal humiliation was painful. Humiliation of one's family was much worse. Humiliation of one's social status was agony to bear. But humiliation of one's nation was the most excruciating of human miseries.”

“The most elementary of good manners . . . at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.”

“The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.”

“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos”