There are physical characteristics which are inherited. These include things like good looks, high intelligence, physical coordination. These attributes contribute to success in life, and success in life is a determinant of optimism.

I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what the past is, and I think I know what future is, but I'm really not comfortable with the notion of present.

I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at any given moment is billiard balls whose past determines our future course. That doesn't take into account that we are forever generating internal representations of positive futures and choosing among them.

The goal of a life free of dysphoria is a snare and a delusion. A better goal is of good commerce with the world. Authentic happiness, astonishingly, can occur even in the presence of authentic sadness.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Our future growth relies on competitiveness and innovation, skills and productivity... and these in turn rely on the education of our people.

Poetry is a special use of language that opens onto the real. The business of the poet is truth telling, which is why in the Celtic tradition no one could be a teacher unless he or she was a poet.

The processes of teaching the child that everything cannot be as he wills it are apt to be painful both to him and to his teacher.