Ordinary people, caught in the trap of their routine lives, are not villains any more than eccentrics or rebels are villains. Essentially, both kinds… - Sydney J. Harris

We are just beginning to learn that our same old habits, like the exploitation of nonrenewable resources, may make us at one with the auk and the dodo.

One of the most frequent mistakes we make lies in assuming that personality is a collection of traits, or that a personality is merely the sum of its parts. Personality is a way of organizing these parts...If we look at persons dynamically, and not simply as a static set of traits, we can see that certain defects are the price they pay for their virtues...This is why “pointing out” a bad trait to a colleague or a subordinate - even in a kindly and a well-meaning way - usually does no good, and may even do some harm. It makes him feel worse, and does not enable him to act any better.

We think the future lies ahead, but its seed is contained in the present. There is no sharp break between the two: the lie we tell today can send us sprawling a year from now; the way we treat our infant determines the way he treats us when he reaches adolescence.