Truth is I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence imagination and wonder.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

I'm interested in the human impact of the giant foot of misplaced government. After all we encounter it every day.

Power must be used but it must be tempered by soul-searching and the recognition of our human capacity for error. That is the maxim that should inform our approach to every challenge from reforming state government to engaging in foreign affairs.

At a time of such hope and optimism in the Middle East we cannot let the Libyan government violate every principle of international law and human rights with impunity.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature a type nowhere at present existing.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.