Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
PIANO, n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience.
REACH, n. The radius of action of the human hand. The area within which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide.
IGNORAMUS, n. A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself, and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
One of Obama's first major acts as president was to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and some of the money in that bill went to Saft.
I believe that it's fine if the university wants to regulate, for example, bandwidth access, but they should treat the students data as private data.
It's only a slight exaggeration to say we haven't progressed much beyond the invention of agriculture when it comes to our view of the natural world.
At last we've seen the first installment of Joss Whedon's new web series, 'Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog,' and it's sweeter than we'd ever imagined.
One knows, of course, that Donald Trump behaves differently from the leaders of other countries, especially the leaders of other Western democracies.
And I think that's important, to know how the water's gone over the dam before you start to describe it. It helps to have been over the dam yourself.
Of course ABC and its parent company Disney were right to cancel the sitcom 'Roseanne' after its eponymous star, Roseanne Barr, wrote a racist tweet.
Voter fraud is a reality in American elections, but it is typical of the candidate to confuse anecdote with data and turn allegation into conspiracy.
When those of us in the words-making world use the term 'overregulation,' we are mostly putting a name to a concept we rarely experience consciously.
When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity.
The great thing about Watergate is, is that the system worked. The American system worked. The press did its job. We did what we were supposed to do.
I think personal actions definitely matter. I think collectively they can make a big difference. But I also think that people don't live in a vacuum.
I believe America will always win the war. It's a superpower that no one can challenge. The real challenge is for the United States to win the peace.
Donald Trump does not stick to Republican orthodoxy, which, you know, and this is always supposed to have been his downfall. Maybe it's his strength.
If we have been brought up with the idea that life is for suffering and sacrifice, then of course we would seek death to escape this 'vale of tears'.
The outlaw, in the American imagination, is a subject of romance - a 'good' bad man, he is typically a master of escape, a crack shot, a ladies' man.
Real security will come when it's a moneymaker for private companies who want to satisfy public demand for an Internet that isn't crawling with bugs.
Personally, I find visualisations great for helping me understand the world and for sifting the huge amounts of information that deluge me every day.
Charles Wang, owner of the New York Islanders, serves as something of a cautionary tale in terms of how heavy owner involvement can sink a franchise.
Age is not measured by years. Nature does not equally distribute energy. Some people are born old and tired while others are going strong at seventy.
Be prepared, work hard, and hope for a little luck. Recognize that the harder you work and the better prepared you are, the more luck you might have.
In the criminal justice system you see the worst people on their best behavior, unlike the civil system, where the best people behave at their worst.
I'm a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia.
The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.
I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe.
In fact, of all hoodoos in Wall Street I think the resolve to induce the stock market to act as a fairy godmother is the busiest and most persistent.
It's essentially taught in high school and college survey courses as an item on a timeline: 'The Lusitania was sunk; the U.S. gets into World War I'.
Most visitors to Iceland tend to spend just a few hours in Reykjavik before moving on to the geological wonders beyond. I think they are missing out.
There is a thing about women, in particular, being endlessly grateful for the opportunities in life, rather than saying, 'I'm here because I'm good.'
I'm very fortunate in the things I've done and I've worked really hard at them. It's always ultimately up to the viewers whether they like it or not.
People are drawn to radical Islam because they feel their traditional ways of life threatened by the influx of KFC and Hollywood movies and the like.
It seems in America you are stuck with the position you adopted, even when events change, in order to claim absolute consistency. That can't be good.
American wars in Muslim countries created some extremists and inflamed many more while producing a security vacuum that allowed them to wreak mayhem.
Often, foreign policy - which, by definition, is largely out of American control - is simply a matter of not doing the wrong thing, the unwise thing.
Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room.
What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.
Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.
Being able to support oneself allows one to choose a marriage out of love and not just economic dependence. It also allows one to risk that marriage.
Sadomasochiasm - which we know very well doesn't exist in societies that don't have child abuse - is regarded some sort of natural sexual expression.
I think we acquire habits of mind when we're little, and I lived in the future because I was always imagining being a grown-up, when I could get out.
As for the American child's classic problem - too much mother, too little father - that would be cured by an equalization of parental responsibility.
The fingerprinting requirement affected only law-abiding citizens that want to buy firearms. It had no impact on Baltimore's criminal element at all.
In the media universe we're in, where there are people screaming on one end, there is no problem at all with having a little bit of extra politeness.
Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration - courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God's children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.
On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of. On the other side was sense.
No reporter of my generation, whatever his genius, ever really rated spats and a walking stick until he had covered both a lynching and a revolution.