Depression is horrible, but it added a richness and depth to the person I am today, and I appreciate the value of those changes. But if that happy child had gotten a chance to grow up without depression, I think he would have been changed in different ways, and under the tutelage of gentler teachers, would have become no less worthwhile and... See more

In a letter to his wife in 1780, John Adams, one of America’s founders, expressed a sentiment that was very similar to what my grandfather felt — and with which many veterans undoubtedly agree. He wrote:

I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and

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in a more general sense, happiness isn’t truly shallow — it just has a different kind of depth. The passions of people raised in a kinder, gentler world may be alien and incomprehensible to the older generation, but they are no less intense, and the culture around them is no less complex. Adversity forces us to rise to its challenge, but abundance... See more

Our legacy is to fill the Universe with children who laugh more than we were allowed to.

Nor, I think, are we simply on a temporary upswing. Some romanticists imagine that society is a cycle, where hard times create strong men, who create good times, which creates weak men, who create hard times. But whether or not that sort of institutional cycle exists, the technologies discovered during the last upswing will be preserved. Countries... See more

The passions of people raised in a kinder, gentler world may be alien and incomprehensible to the older generation, but they are no less intense, and the culture around them is no less complex. Adversity forces us to rise to its challenge, but abundance allows us to discover who we might become, and that is a different sort of adventure.