“I'm fascinated how often and with what whole-heartedness people will r...” — Diane Ackerman Quote

I'm fascinated how often and with what whole-heartedness people will risk their lives to perform acts of courage, sacrifice, and compassion for total strangers.

We embrace two-legged beings, and can warm to four-legged beings, too, but for most people, six legs is pushing it. Most don't need multi-eyed, antennaed face time.

On some summer days in New York City, the air hangs thickly visible, like the combined exhalations of eight million souls. Steam rising from vents underground makes you wonder if there isn't one giant sweat gland lodged beneath the city.

As people flock to urban centers where ground space is limited, cities with green walls and roofs and skyscraper farms offer improved health and well-being, renewable resources, reliable food supply, and relief to the environment.

Courage? Well, that's a difficult quality to define. If a man has never known fear can you call him courageous?

I think it is not just the U.N. speaking, but the concept of a third party, a third party to a conflict speaking out. You know, sometimes saying, 'Stop, this is enough. This cannot be allowed to happen,' gives the victims and the people who are caught in that situation courage, encouragement, support.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

In short, we need to recover the courage we celebrate in our heroes, and in particular, the courage to tolerate, for the sake of a free society, a level of risk we hardly ever imagined in the past.