Individual cultures and ideologies have their appropriate uses but none of them erase or replace the universal experiences, like love and weeping and laughter, common to all human beings.

Knowledge planted in truth grows in truth.Strength born of peace loses nothing to hate.

Diversity is an aspect of human existence that cannot be eradicated by terrorism or war or self-consuming hatred. It can only be conquered by recognizing and claiming the wealth of values it represents for all.

If the idea of loving those whom you have been taught to recognize as your enemies is too overwhelming, consider more deeply the observation that we are all much more alike than we are unalike.

On either side of a potentially violent conflict, an opportunity exists to exercise compassion and diminish fear based on recognition of each other's humanity. Without such recognition, fear fueled by uninformed assumptions, cultural prejudice, desperation to meet basic human needs, or the panicked uncertainty of the moment explodes into violence.

Millions of tears have fallen for black sons, brothers, lovers, and friends whose assailants took or maimed their lives and then simply went on their way.

Trayvon Martin, at the most, seems only to have been guilty of being himself.

Whatever grace might 'trickle down' from the higher regions of a given society to the lower is no more essential than that which rises and converges from the opposite direction.

We were, each of us… at a crossroads of public and private dynamics which had brought us to this frame-worthy moment. I thought of the different currents and crosscurrents of history which had formed, merged, broken apart, and reformed to create the opportunity for us to give something essential to each other’s lives.