"Do everything right all the time and the child will prosper. It is as simple as that, except for: fate, luck, heredity, chance, the astrological sign he was born under, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he becomes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstances, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies."
Quotations
"Life always gives exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath."
"Man has a mind that soars out to speculate about atoms and infinity, who can place himself imaginatively at a point in space and contemplate bemusedly his own planet. This immense expansion, this dexterity, this ethereality, this self-consciousness gives to man literally the status of a small god in nature. Yet, at the same time man is a worm and food for worms."
"We consult astrology charts like the Babylonians, try to make our children into our own image with a firm hand like the Romans, elbow others to get a breath-quickening glimpse of the queen in her ritual procession, and confess to the priests and attend church. And we wonder why, with all this power capital drawn from so many sources, we are deeply anxious about the meaning of our lives. The reason is plain enough: none of these, nor all of them taken together, represents an integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust."