“It is an honor to be invited to speak at your graduation ceremony. I wish I could tell you what you want to hear. But I can’t lie. You need to hear the truth. I hope you can handle it.”

“Survival requires sustenance, society, and philosophy. Sustenance means more than material comfort. Social relations means more than other persons. Philosophy of life means more than big answers to big questions.”

“Happiness and success don’t always go together. Being less successful by choosing a simple, modest, and less exhausting life will make you even more happy. Would you rather burn-out like a shooting star or fade gently away like a garden of roses?”

“Happiness is not a goal. You cannot achieve happiness by aiming for it. Yet entrances to happiness are everywhere. Not one of your footsteps leads away from it.”

“Jesus made up his own mind. He chose to think and reason for himself. Your life can be just as individual and extraordinary. The ball is in your hands. The clock is ticking. Take the shot!”

“Life is neither meaningful nor meaningless. Freedom of choice has very little to do with how we live. Heaven means fear, doubt, and uncertainty. Justice may be illegal just as the law may be immoral.”

“All certainties end in doubts and all doubts end in certainties. Let’s hang a question mark on six certainties you have long taken for granted.”

“We are neither in control nor the center of everything. Even your thoughts are beyond your control. But you are more than the voices in your head or the atoms that make-up your body.”

“Do you ever feel like running home to your mother and licking your wounds? But your mother blames you for your mistakes, and some wounds are impossible to reach with your tongue? Let me confess the top 14 lies I once told myself.”

“We have a profound desire to believe because we fear the uncertainty of not-knowing, and the not-knowing makes any belief, no matter how absurd, feel more likely to be true. The idea of God is a logically incoherent mess, but it is preferable to the doubt and the uncertainty of not-knowing.”