Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I first visited Kurdistan in 2003. I arrived in the town of Sulaimaniyah, courtesy of smugglers who drove me across the border from Iran. Sulaimaniyah was a small, charming provincial Kurdish town.
My mother can certainly be rough around the edges at times, but she also taught me to have compassion for people who have been wronged. She taught me to empathize with those who have made mistakes.
This horror of pain is a rather low instinct and... if I think of human beings I've known and of my own life, such as it is, I can't recall any case of pain which didn't, on the whole, enrich life.
The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none left over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment.
Who can ever be alone for a moment in Italy? Every stone has a voice, every grain of dust seems instinct with spirit from the Past, every step recalls some line, some legend of long-neglected lore.
The people who are doing really well and who are getting stopped in airports are the people who are going to say the more outrageous things and get on TV and state their opinion on a regular basis.
... peace is a militant thing ... any peace movement must have behind it a higher passion than the desire for war. No one can be a pacifist without being ready to fight for peace and die for peace.
You know, I don't walk home alone at night. If I drive into our courtyard after dark, I ask my partner to come outside with the dog to meet me. Those are, you know, basic sort of urban precautions.
Times are harder there right now. I think it's been well publicized. We are - the show is not where I want it to be right now. The ratings are not where I want them to be. I want to make it better.
In our daily lives, where we're bombarded by the fake and the trivial, reading serves as a way to stop, shut out the noise of the world, and try to grab hold of something real, no matter how small.
For me, when I go in to write a profile, and no ground rules are laid down, and I'm there to write an on-the-record profile and cover readings while in the room, then that means it's on the record.
Many 'hard' scientists regard the term 'social science' as an oxymoron. Science means hypotheses you can test, and prove or disprove. Social science is little more than observation putting on airs.
The two biggest legacies of the Raj are the unification of India and the English language. Moreover, without the railways, India would not have been connected and could not have become one country.
Our situations... are very different. The nature of our politics is different. I don't deny, though, that political cycles, which are observable in the United States, are sometimes observable here.
I understand the horrors of having no insurance, but, believe me, eight hours of sleep and good meals are NOT going to prevent you from getting sick. Don't gamble with your life; it's a stupid bet.
First and foremost, I'm a journalist. My business is the truth. Now, I happen to be other things, too - a pop-culture phenomenon, the most in-demand speaker on the campus lecture circuit, whatever.
I'm no fan of Sarkozy, but I support a ban on face veils because they erase women from society and are promoted by an ultra-conservative ideology that equates piety with the disappearance of women.
I have watched patients stand and gaze longingly toward the city they in all likelihood will never enter again. It means liberty and life; it seems so near, and yet heaven is not further from hell.
If only women are talking about women's rights, then the issue has failed from the start. If you think about the Holocaust, that wasn't just a Jewish issue. Civil rights weren't just a black issue.
Washington is a city of locker-room boys, and all the old, outmoded notions apply: men and women are ushered to separate rooms after dinner, sex is dirty, and they are still serving onion-soup dip.
We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy, and the era when happiness was a dry martini, and now we have come to the era when happiness is 'knowing what your uterus looks like'.
Don't tell me about the world. Not today. It's springtime and they're knocking baseball around fields where the grass is damp and green in the morning and the kids are trying to hit the curve ball.
Every educated and intelligent person glories in the freedom of women in Western societies to exercise their talents to the full and their freedom to walk safely in the streets of our great cities.
It was so quiet that morning in Paris that the heels of my two companions and myself were loud on the deserted pavements. It was a city of shuttered shops, and barred windows, and deserted avenues.
President [Barack] Obama - he was unsuccessful in his efforts to raise the federal minimum wage, but he still used the Labor Department in other ways to try to boost paychecks for American workers.
Americans are opting out of public venues like the playground and the sidewalk for private venues like the healthclub and the mall. We're living our lives inside one form of corporation or another.
It is more than a little ironic that "capital accumulation" once a rather tendentious Marxian view of a supposed capitalist obsession, should have become - of all things - Wall Street's own slogan.
Everybody says, "Well, if it's a democracy, let them have nuclear weapons." America is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons. We're the only ones, this democracy, our great democracy.
'Argo,' 'Lincoln,' and 'Zero Dark Thirty,' three films honored with Best Picture Oscar nominations, lionize their Washington-anchored protagonists as crafty, competent, and virtually incorruptible.
Men in Government monopolize the necessary use of force; they are not using their energies productively; they are not milking cows. To get butter, they must use guns; they have nothing else to use.
My father's biggest achievement with us as children was that he taught us that everyone is human and equal, even your enemy has the same needs and wants that you do: understanding, love, inclusion.
Conditions were so hard. To send the news out, telex was the only means, but telex was very rare in Africa. So if somebody was flying to Europe, we gave him correspondence to send after he arrived.
I'm half Egyptian, and I'm Muslim. But I grew up in Canada, far from my Arab roots. Like so many who straddle East and West, I've been drawn, over the years, to try to better understand my origins.
In the United States, Western Europe and Japan, there is widespread access to dialysis, most of it publicly funded. But in many countries, the majority of patients who need dialysis die without it.
We have far too many Tudors. Henry VIII is far too over-rated. He's become the ultimate brand name, like the Marks & Spencers of a high street of British history. I'm more interested in King Herod.
In 2007, Prince performed at the halftime of the Super Bowl. The stage in Miami was wreathed in purple light, and it poured during his performance, so that he played 'Purple Rain' in a purple rain.
Why are we willing to accept a new mathematical formula we don't understand as the product of a brilliant mind, while rejecting a new art form we don't understand as the product of a deranged mind?
The pursuit of the vibrant seems to be the universal job description of the nation's city planners nowadays. It is also part of the Obama administration's economic recovery strategy for the nation.
It is not safe in the republican form of government that clannishness should exist either by compulsory or voluntary reason. It is not good for the government and it is not good for the individual.
Admitting weakness seems to be such a severe psychic threat for Bush that when he makes a mistake it's safer just to reinforce it. The strategy creates a perverse system of rewards and punishments.
What's the third smartphone platform? Is it Windows phone? Is Windows Phone going to finally get off the mat in the developed world? Amazon believes their platform has a chance to become the third.
When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.
Many of the differences that cause students to be excluded in school are actually the same qualities or skills that other people are going to admire, respect or value about that person in adulthood.
New Amsterdam Records, a new label run by composers, has begun documenting this hybrid music, with invigorating discs by the band itsnotyouitsme and the composers Corey Dargel and William Brittelle.
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward.
I think Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner shared the view that they shouldn't be in the business of bailouts, but you know, you're not in the business of bailouts until you frankly think you need to be.
There can be problems with extended families, and it can get a little close for comfort. But for the younger generations, it's clear that this option is becoming almost as appealing as living alone.
When it comes to the population explosion, there are two questions on the table. One, is our population growth going to kill us all? And two, is there any ethical way to prevent that from happening?