It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going, and that's a famous story, but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?

There are things that I really find important, and that we need to remind ourselves of. When you think about disability, do you really think about it? Someone who's a full-time trainer or a boxer, someone who's got a major disability, but who doesn't let that get in his way, that's a really good message for someone who is able-bodied. It can make them think, 'Wow, I suppose I could be doing better for myself.'

For alarmingly large chunks of an average day, I am a moron.

There are many differences between a baby and an I-Pod. And one of the biggest is, no ones going to mug you for your baby.

I miss him like one might miss a scar, or wooden leg, something disfiguring but characteristic.

One has so many more opinions about what has gone wrong than about what is perfect.

What went wrong? Nothing and everything.

The outward manifestations of an inner combustion are never very directed.

“Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.”

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.”

“Nothing brings people together more than mutual hatred.”

“Reading is to the mind what exerise is to the body.”

“The majority of our polities, as Aristotle says, are like the Cyclops, abandoning the guidance of the women and children to each individual man according to his mad and injudicious ideas: hardly any, except the polities of Sparta and of Crete, have entrusted the education of children to their laws.”

“If it lay in my power to make myself feared, I had rather make myself beloved.”

“The more simply we entrust ourself to Nature the more wisely we do so. Oh what a soft and delightful pillow, and what a sane one on which to rest a well-schooled head, are ignorance and unconcern.”

“Assaulted as I am by ambition, covetousness, rashness and superstition, and having such enemies to life as that within me, should I start wondering about the motions of the Universe?”

“It is fear that I am most afraid of.”

“there is nothing in the whole world madder than bringing matters down to the measure of our own capacities and potentialities. How”

“When a man is commonplace in discussion yet valued for what he writes that shows that his talents lie in his borrowed sources not in himself.”

“You should study more to understand that you know little.”

“Happy are they who can please and delight their senses with things insensate—and who can live off their death.”

“I have a mind that belongs wholly to itself, and is accustomed to go its own way. Having never until this hour had a master or governor imposed on me, I have advanced as far as I pleased, and at my own pace. This has made me slack and unfit for the service of others; it has made me useless to any but myself.”

“Philosophy believes she has not made a bad use of her resources when she has bestowed on Reason sovereign mastery over our soul and authority to bridle our appetites.”

“how I would hate the reputation of being clever at writing but stupid and useless at everything else! I would rather be stupid at both than to choose to employ my good qualities as badly as that.”