Gratitude

Keep a journal. Knowing you're going to write something every day sharpens your attention to everything that happens. For the longest time, I didn't keep a journal, and as a result much of my pretty long and interesting life is lost to me.

Your job is to witness. To witness, to understand, to comprehend, and to celebrate. To celebrate with your lives.

Because my parents fled in time, I escaped Hitler. Because of America's generosity, I escaped Stalin. Because of the vision of the Truman-Marshall generation, I have been privileged to live my life in freedom. Millions have still never had that opportunity.

I still get up at 5:30 every morning because I like my life so much that I hate to waste any of it by sleeping more than is necessary.

Your good friends from college may be the best friends you ever have. Guard those relationships like gold, work hard to maintain them. When they have a wedding, go across the country to be there. When one of them needs your help, cross the globe to give it to them.

Seventy-five percent of your education was paid for by your tuition, but twenty-five percent was paid for by people who never met you, through direct contributions to your endowment. They did not know who you were but gave generously so you could have your education.

You have not earned the right to do less than your best.

You can pay back only seldom. But you can always pay forward, and you must pay forward.

I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.

The important thing is to miss as little as possible and to share as much.

Those who work for a great cause receive comforting satisfaction in the knowledge that they will leave the world better than they found it.