Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.
Life is not a matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and sometimes unpleasant.
I thought I might teach philosophy but the atmosphere of a college faculty repelled me; the few islands of greatness seemed to be washed by seas of pettiness and mediocrity.
A lost election can have the jolt of a drop through the gallows door, leading to a dark night of the soul in which the future presses down like a cloud that will never lift.
The whole ecosystem of celebrity has broken down for writers. If you go back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, writers were on TV a lot, and they were allowed to misbehave a lot.
The great unknown in this country is where this leaves the Republican Party after this election. Will it be the party of the Kochs or will it be the party of [Donald] Trump?
I was an unusually private person - in a way, kind of insufferably so. I think I thought the celebrity thing when it happened was a temporary phenomenon, and I was above it.
I'm big on setting goals, but I also think that if you have too many lofty ambitions and set goals for everything, you can sabotage your efforts by overextending your brain.
If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.
No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
I guess, as a reporter, I always thought that my biggest strength was that I could get anybody to talk to me. I wasn't the best writer, but I could get people to talk to me.
To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American.
In those days [the 1790s],the students paid their professors directly for the lectures-typically about three guineas a class (a guinea was worth slightly more than a pound).
When people start hurling insults at you, you know their minds are closed and there's no point in debating. You disengage yourself as quickly as possible from the situation.
When you're visiting an antiques fair, turn left once you've passed through the entrance. Everyone else will turn right, which means you can get to the bargains before them.
Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.
Over the last fifteen years, every single person the U.S. has tried to extradite from Sweden has been extradited, and they refuse to provide a guarantee [that won't happen].
Newish friends, if they get ghastly, can be weighed and found wanting, but you'd never do a thing like that to old ones; their terrible habits are just part of the universe.
All working, practical political systems, even those professing to originate in moral grandeur, are based upon and operate by contempt of human life and the individual fate.
Changing the world doesn't happen all at once. It isn't a big bang. It's an evolution, the sum of a billion tiny sparks. And some of those sparks will have to come from you.
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama don't go to Georgetown... The Clintons did, indeed. And the Clintons go out and about in Washington now. They go to neighborhood restaurants.
What I like most about change is that it's a synonym for 'hope'. If you're taking a risk, what you are really saying is, 'I believe in tomorrow and I will be the part of it.
What is the secret of Stalin's unquestioned strength? He controls every wheel and screw of the party machine, which is the source of authority and power in the Soviet Union.
If you're last in your class at Harvard, it doesn't feel like you're a good student, even though you really are. It's not smart for everyone to want to go to a great school.
It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant.
David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial. Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence - it is a crime against humanity after all.
Spirituality in Washington can be more of a - I don't want to say it - but, a networking opportunity. Religion is often used opportunistically in the political conversation.
If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.
Journalists casually use terms like crossing the border illegally when referring to asylum seekers - when in fact there is no law that says they must use the ports of entry.
To read Helen Macdonald's memoir, H Is for Hawk, is to feel as though Emily Bronte just turned up at your door, trailing all the windy, feral outdoors into your living room.
I eat smart - I do think that's the sort of thing that will eventually show up in the condition of your skin, your hair, and your nails, and your own feeling about yourself.
British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order; but, as a by-product, they served to unite the country, making it ripe for independence.
There's much about the British Raj which I think is disreputable. It was rapacious; it was a sort of kleptocracy, and it was also racist. Indians were not treated as equals.
Someone told me that they didn't want to take a flu shot because they didn't want to put a foreign substance in their body. What do they think they do at dinner every night?
Foreign aid has been perfected so that it subsidizes corporate U.S. agriculture while preventing poor countries from developing profitable agriculture or feeding themselves.
Here's the thing: I love what I do for the magazine, and I love what I do on television. When you do the things that you love, it's not bad. It's about being very organized.
What I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there is something comforting about the fact that if you melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get thick!
No man who has lived through a temporary spiritual experience is ever likely to forget it. His days will be haunted until he sets out to seek ways and means of repeating it.
If you claim to represent and speak for the people, and they are forced to pay your salary, you have a duty to experience life as near as possible to the way others live it.
I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives
Jerel Law has crafted a fantastic story that will leave every reader wanting more. Stop looking for the next great read in fantasy fiction for young readers-you've found it!
I was able to do something that people can't do these days, which is to have quality time with the guys who were trying to be president and a number of them who got the job.
One of the very important things that have to be learned around the time dying becomes a real prospect is to recognize those occasions when we have been useful in the world.
President George W. Bush won reelection in 2004 largely because he was seen as comfortable in his own skin, while rival John Kerry was viewed as a flip-flopping opportunist.
Underground literature only began in the '70s, when technical developments made it possible. Before that, we were involved in a game with the censors. That was our struggle.
So when I cover the president, I try to remember two things: First, if you don't ask, you don't find out; and second, the questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.
I really haven't made up my mind yet. A lot of people have encouraged me to consider running, and others have cautioned against it, saying it's a good way to ruin your life.
People always tell me the next stage of my career means moving to New York, but I never will. I don't care how that affects my career, and I think it's stupid that it would.
Doctors are wonderful people, but they don't know everything. We're all responsible for our own health, and shouldn't feel guilty if we ask questions or get second opinions.
By bringing the voices of the ordinary people faced with extraordinary challenges to television screens around the world, I hope to affect change in one community at a time.