It’s a complex world.  I hope you’ll learn to make distinctions.  A peach is not its fuzz, a toad is not its warts, a person is not his or her crankiness.  If we can make distinctions, we can be tolerant, and we can get to the heart of our problems instead of wrestling endlessly with the gross exteriors.  Your assumptions are your windows on the world.  Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.

                                            - Alan Alda, at his daughter’s commencement address.