Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines.

Today, no leader can afford to be indifferent to the challenge of engaging employees in the work of creating the future. Engagement may have been optional in the past, but it's pretty much the whole game today.

Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns.

As human beings, we are the only organisms that create for the sheer stupid pleasure of doing so. Whether it's laying out a garden, composing a new tune on the piano, writing a bit of poetry, manipulating a digital photo, redecorating a room, or inventing a new chili recipe - we are happiest when we are creating.

I don't know whether the universe contains any evidence of intelligent design, but I can assure you that thousands of everyday products do not.

At the pinnacle of great design are products so gorgeous and lust-worthy that you want to lick them: a Porsche 911, Samsung's Luxia TV, an Eames lounge chair or anything by Loro Piana.

Restoration of friendship with Russia, our biggest neighbor, is necessary for our peace and economy.

I was writing my Ph.D. in the late 1980s and was keeping an eye on what was happening in the world. It became obvious to me that Russia couldn't live without computers. I think I worked this out a year before anyone else. I started looking for people who could help import them.

It was not my wish to come into politics. I was not a public person; I preferred to spend my birthdays with family and friends. But the 2008 elections were fraudulent, so I decided to finance the opposition to make them stronger.

If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work together and to produce highly personal images.

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

I gave Mitt Romney some donations for his campaign because he was a friend, and friendship came first. I've always been a Democrat, and I've had different views than Mitt Romney. I'm not Mitt Romney, and I think people will realize that when they meet me out there.

I love Indian food. London also has great Indian food.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.

Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them.

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

Man's only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

A little thought and a little kindness are often worth more than a great deal of money.

I believe the first test of a truly great man is in his humility.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

A great thing can only be done by a great person; and they do it without effort.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don't mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

The sky is the part of creation in which nature has done for the sake of pleasing man.

It is written on the arched sky; it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature; it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.

You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

The principle of all successful effort is to try to do not what is absolutely the best, but what is easily within our power, and suited for our temperament and condition.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

There is no wealth but life.

Everyone is your best friend when you are successful. Make sure that the people that you surround yourself with are also the people that you are not afraid of failing with.

Constructive criticism is about finding something good and positive to soften the blow to the real critique of what really went on.