They understood that finding a passion was a difficult and mysterious process, one that required freedom and could only be hampered by family pressure. So we were encouraged to choose for ourselves. Moreover, we absorbed the lesson that what mattered was not the status or monetary potential of our choice, but the honesty and wholeheartedness with which we chose it. If.

She taught me that everyone had a story worth listening to. This is another way of saying that everyone has something to teach.

Mistakes are very seldom permanent, most of them can be fixed with less difficulty and drama than one imagines, and there’s nothing shameful about them. There is, however, something sad and limiting about the fear of making them.

In some ways, it’s easier to settle for someone else’s version of success than to risk falling short at one’s own.

The world over, give a guy money and it goes to drinking, gambling, and women. When you give a woman money, it goes to feeding, clothing, helping people.

Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.

Life is random, neither fair nor unfair.

What we have is a crisis of imagination. Albert Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it.

It didn’t matter how big our house was; it mattered that there was love in it.

It didn't matter how big our house was; it mattered that there was love in it.