Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think one of the most important things we can do for people is to expand opportunity - whether it's the opportunity to live a life free of discrimination or the opportunity to get a good job that provides a gateway to the middle class. I've dedicated my career to expanding opportunity, and it's proven incredibly rewarding.
I was raised in a dominantly Filipino family. I didn't know I was 'mixed' until I got older and started asking questions about my grandparents, the origins of our middle and last names. We were kind of textbook Pinoys. A lot of the Filipino stereotypes that were joked about by me and my friends rang very true with my family.
My formative years were in Houston. I was in middle school, and everyone was dropping the last half of their names and adding an 'o' to the end. My little crew that I had, we were an all-female rap group, and everyone had an 'o' at the end of their name. I was Lisso. Then this dude started getting lazy with it, saying Lizzo.
It has been an honor to work in the Obama Administration and to serve this President, particularly during a period of unprecedented change in the broader Middle East. Obviously, there is still work to do but I promised my wife I would return to government for only two years and we both agreed it is time to act on my promise.
Consciousness-one level is understanding where we are in space. Consciousness two is where we understand our position in society: who's top dog, who's underdog and who's in the middle. And type-three consciousness is simulating the future. And type-three consciousness, only humans have this ability to see far into the future.
Hot, dry katabatic winds, like the south foehn in Europe, the sharav in the Middle East, and the Santa Ana of Southern California, are all believed to have a decided effect on human behavior and are associated with such health problems as migraines, depression, lethargy, and moodiness. Some scientists say that this is a myth.
I never regard my characters, my protagonists, as personifications. It's not that I sit by my desk and I pick up a character who will be the spokesperson of the Israeli Left, another one will be the spokesperson of the Right, another one will be the spokesperson of Middle Eastern Jews, European Jews, religions Jews and so on.
Conscience is the most dangerous thing you possess. If you wake it up, it may destroy you. To live a life of total moral rigor is not necessarily the way to go. It's the path for very few people. Most people need to come up with some kind of middle ground that satisfies their practical, moral, and philosophical esthetic needs.
Between 2001 and 2011, Brazil lifted 20 million people out of poverty and into its growing middle class, and in the last quarter of the twentieth century Botswana's gross domestic product per capita grew faster than that of any other country on the planet. The once-labeled 'Third World' is edging its way into the 'First World.'
Remember 'The Brady Bunch' TV show? That 1970s family had a full-time live-in housekeeper called Alice. Mrs. Brady worked at the PTA and did community work. She didn't clean her own house. That was middle class. Now you have to be very rich to employ a housekeeper. Everything it meant to be middle class has changed dramatically.
I feel like so much of mainstream feminism springs from the second wave, which was essentially a discourse spearheaded by white, cisgender, upper middle class women. I feel - especially as I'm trying to negotiate this new female space with the feminism that's available to me - there are a lot of places where I'm disenfranchised.
My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street, we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas, my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.
My dad took me out to see a meteor shower when I was a little kid, and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn't know what he wanted to do. He wouldn't tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky.
First, you have stereotypes, and that will be the black drug dealer, the east Asian kung fu master, the Middle Eastern terrorist in 'True Lies.' Then you have stuff that takes place on culturally specific terrain, that engages with it, but actually subverts assumptions. 'Smashes' stereotypes. That's where I've come into the game.
Iranians and Arabs aren't considered diversity because we still don't have minority status in America. There was a group of Middle Eastern actors trying to get SAG to recognize us as part of the diversity they should look out for, because we do represent a different point of view. When OscarsSoWhite happened, I felt part of that.
Lebanon was at one time known as a nation that rose above sectarian hatred; Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. All of that was blown apart by senseless religious wars, financed and exploited in part by those who sought power and wealth. If women had been in charge, would they have been more sensible? It's a theory.
The American middle class always wants to be upper class and is scared to death of being lower class. It's a highly mobile group of people. They're not like the people that want to be shopkeepers forever, have always been shopkeepers and want always to be shopkeepers. These people mostly are insulted by being called middle class.
The world has grown increasingly dangerous, with a nuclear madman in North Korea testing an ICBM a month, mullahs in Tehran plotting the takeover of the Middle East, Russia engaging in 'frozen conflicts' in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, a very hot civil war in Syria, and China appropriating a vast swath of the Pacific to itself.
To be sure, many of the Sykes-Picot borders reflected deals cut in Europe rather than local demographic or historical realities. But that hardly makes the Middle East unique: Most borders around the world owe their legacy less to thoughtful design or popular choice than to some mixture of violence, ambition, geography, and chance.
My relationships with both my mother and father are good. We spent several difficult years hashing over the problems and the past, and worked out a fairly solid middle ground. I wouldn't say my relationship with either of them - they're no longer together - is exactly typical, but that would be difficult after all we went through.
I'm just so grateful for the 10 years that I had in Sri Lanka when it was in the middle of a war and I was getting shot at, because now and again I remember glimpses of those times, and I just go, 'Wow, I'll never, ever see that again in my life. And I'm never gonna feel that, and I'm never gonna feel for a human being like that.'
Darkness comes. In the middle of it, the future looks blank. The temptation to quit is huge. Don't. You are in good company... You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. But with God, nothing is impossible. He has more ropes and ladders and tunnels out of pits than you can conceive. Wait. Pray without ceasing. Hope.
On Putin's order, Russia intervenes in Syria not to fight terrorists but to abet the war crimes of the Assad regime. Russian bombers deliberately target aid workers and hospitals. They threaten Syrian freedom fighters trained by the U.S. They are allied with our enemies in the Middle East and trying to weaken our friendships there.
We face a choice this election. President Obama is fighting for changes that grow the economy from the middle out and help all Americans succeed - jobs, education, health reform, the DREAM Act, equal pay for women. He is moving us forward with opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow. Mitt Romney wants to take us back to yesterday.
My father, Jimmy Walker, was the first pick in the 1967 draft, but I never met him. He passed in 2007. I found out about him in middle school. I was old enough to understand who he was, where he went to college, and what his game was about. Older players like Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have come up to me to talk about him.
Itjtawy was ancient Egypt's capital for over four hundred years, at a period of time called the Middle Kingdom about four thousand years ago. The site is located in the Faiyum of Egypt, and the site is really important because in the Middle Kingdom there was this great renaissance for ancient Egyptian art, architecture and religion.
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.
I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London... Done a fair bit of traveling really.
We are in the middle of a big swamp of ignorance that is taught by a lot of nonsense, propaganda, absurdity, amalgams. I have a hard time listening to any speech. You feel like you want to stop the TV every two seconds to rephrase them, because it's lie after lie, turning stuff upside down, and you can't follow that. That's the trap.
I've written out itineraries for baby sitters with years of experience. I've gotten up in the middle of the night and stood over my children's sleeping bodies just to make sure they're breathing, and breathing well. In short, I'm the worst Jewish mother in the world. I make Alexander Portnoy's mother look like a laid-back Earth mama.
All of us are probably three people. We're probably the person that we think we are, and we're probably the person that you or somebody else perceives us to be, and... frankly, we're probably somewhere in the middle. And I think that it's important that there be a balance with respect to how individuals are - you know, are looked at.
As for middle school, I had a really horrible era of style. I'd only play basketball with the boys during lunch, so I went through a phase of only wearing Lakers uniforms to school - that was cute! And then I kind of went through the Puma phase that everyone went through with the sweatsuits, which turned into Juicy Couture sweatsuits.
All over the Middle East, we face difficult challenges: the ongoing tragedy in Syria, the instability in Iraq, and the jihadist terrorism which dares to speak in the name of Islam, brings so many to seek refuge. The Hashemite Kingdom is facing all these challenges with honor, with dignity, and with great national and human solidarity.
Union members not only earn higher median wages; they are more likely to have paid sick leave, short-term disability, and employer-provided child care. Giving people a voice at work - the ability to organize and negotiate for their fair share of the value they helped create - is absolutely essential to a growing, vibrant middle class.
I know the dangers and the seductions of the Middle East. It is part of my identity. I grew up among a people who routinely referred to the creation of the State of Israel as the Nakba - the catastrophe. And yet I fell in love with and married a Jewish American woman, the only daughter of two Holocaust survivors, both Jewish Austrians.
The answers to feeding hungry children is not fewer dollars to feed hungry children, it's to do more. It is to raise the minimum wage. It is to increase, not dismantle, the earned income tax credit. It is to make college more affordable for more middle class families, not more expensive. These are the things that grow our middle class.
My mother took my brother and I to a production of 'The Tempest', and it was in this very small - it could have been the basement of a church or a black box. The space was vast, but there were maybe 15 seats in the middle. Ariel came out wearing a nude sparkly thong and spike heels, and the muses had these gossamer see-through gowns on.
One night I couldn't sleep at three in the morning and I thought, I'm going to color-coordinate my closet. And I did. There's a whole system. It goes from white to black and then all the colors in the middle. Then it goes by tank tops to T-shirts to long sleeves, and then it goes to the next color. Then it goes to sweaters the same way.
I'm literally driving in the middle of the night, and my phone rings, and my manager says, 'How would you like to be the host of the Daily Show?' I get out the car, and I didn't have legs. You know in those movies where there's an explosion? But instead of the sound of the explosion, you hear the silence. That's literally what happened.
I don't know who made the first Aquaman joke. I'm sure it was comics readers; maybe we all did. But it's the idea that the perpetuated story of Aquaman is that he only has powers in water, and he talks to fish. I think it's the idea of him in the middle of a city just doesn't make a lot of sense to people. It's just the character itself.
Gender fluidity is not really feeling like you're at one end of the spectrum or the other. For the most part, I definitely don't identify as any gender. I'm not a guy; I don't really feel like a woman, but obviously I was born one. So, I'm somewhere in the middle, which - in my perfect imagination - is like having the best of both sexes.
The middle ground in Congress has all but disappeared. The founders intended competing principles and interests to check excesses and create a balance in our politics that would benefit 'we the people.' Gerrymandered districts and a hyped-up fight-night media offer a partial explanation of why we seem to have neither checks nor balances.
'Long Black Train' was inspired by a vision that I had of a long, black train running down this track way out in the middle of nowhere. I could see people standing out to the sides of this track watching this train go by. As I was walking, experiencing this vision, I kept asking myself, 'What does this vision mean and what is this train?'
Getting stopped in the middle of the lingerie section, when you're trying to stock up on a few things, by an older man who wants a selfie is a little bit awkward... but I don't let that get in the way of me trying to do normal things, because that is when I get to interact with people as well. Preferably not amongst the underwear, though.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, it's not a job, it's a lifestyle. It defines you. Forget about vacations, about going home at 6 pm - last thing at night you'll send emails, first thing in the morning you'll read emails, and you'll wake up in the middle of the night. But it's hugely rewarding as you're fulfilling something for yourself.
Wherever I went, I became a son-in-law. It was a terrible phase for me. I had to work double hard to get back my identity. Whenever I gave an interview, the first question would invariably be, 'What is it like to be his son-in-law?' Now that question comes somewhere in the middle of the interview. Hopefully, soon, it won't be asked at all.
The story of 'Mirror Mirror' is in many ways a story about evolution. It's about the evolution of a child into an adult. It's about the evolution of those dwarves into something a little less rock-like, a little more humanoid. It's about the evolution of history, too, from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of the Age of Reason.
When I shake someone's hand, I apply the lightest pressure on their wrist with my index and middle fingers and lead them across my body to my left. The cross-body lead is actually a move from salsa dancing. I'm finding out what kind of a partner they're going to be, and I know that if they follow my lead, I can do whatever I want with them.
A lot of people ask me, 'How did you have the courage to walk up to record labels when you were 12 or 13 and jump right into the music industry?' It's because I knew I could never feel the kind of rejection that I felt in middle school. Because in the music industry, if they're gonna say no to you, at least they're gonna be polite about it.
The nice thing about 'Miranda' especially is that the audience that we had was school kids right through to pensioners. It seems to be a show that people watch as a family, so it was the first job I've been involved in that certainly my oldest daughter and my middle daughter are big fans of, and proud that I'm in it, which is a nice feeling.