"One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child."

"A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment."

"The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable."

"Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own."

"Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy."

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

"He who reads widely and ponders deeply builds an unshakeable inner citadel. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"I was born in ancient times, at the end of the world, in a patriarchal Catholic and conservative family. No wonder that by age five I was a raging feminist - although the term had not reached Chile yet, so nobody knew what the heck was wrong with me."