Just Saying: Exploring Twenty-five Remarkable Quotations to Enlighten, Challenge and Inspire

Warm, witty, wise—and sometimes challenging—Just Saying offers bestselling social psychologist Hugh Mackay’s deeply personal reflections on twenty-five quotations from some of the world’s greatest thinkers and writers.

From Confucius and Plato to Susan Sontag and Miles Franklin, from Samuel Johnson and Mary Wollstonecraft to Bertrand Russell and Gloria Steinem, Mackay invites readers to pause, reflect, and join the conversation.

Exploring themes that shape our humanity—kindness and humility, power and prejudice, gender equality and diversity, change and forgiveness—Mackay interprets our complex world with warmth, insight, and humor.

As he says: “Writing these reflections has felt a bit like the beginning of a conversation… now it’s over to you.”

Hugh Mackay is a social psychologist and bestselling author of twenty-five books, including The Way We Are and The Kindness Revolution. Often described as “the man who explains us to ourselves,” he enjoyed a sixty-year career in social research and spent thirty years as a weekly newspaper columnist. In recognition of his pioneering work, he has received honorary doctorates from five Australian universities and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2016.