Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The sisters and brothers that you meet give you the materials which your character uses to build itself. It is said that some people are born great, others achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. In truth, the ways in which your character is built have to do with all three of those. Those around you, those you choose, and those who choose you.
If I'm one that's afflicted with same-gender attraction, I should strive to see myself in a much broader context... seeing myself as a child of God with whatever my talents may be, whether intellect, or music, or athletics, or somebody that has a compassion to help people, to see myself in a larger setting and thus to see my life in that setting.
I have been dealing with the minimum wage issue for the last 28 years that I have been in elective office. And when you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it. At a time when the American people are still asking the question, where are the jobs, why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?
More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: 'Give them something to eat.'
It was a privilege to be president and it is a privilege to be a former president and I believe that I have got a chance to be a part of something that is influential - but not for my sake, but for the sake of people dying in Africa or people worried about a free society in their countries or people who wonder whether there will be a free market.
Healthcare as a human right, it means that every child, no matter where you are born, should have access to a college or trade-school education if they so choose it, and I think no person should be homeless if we can have public structures and public policy to allow for people to have homes and food and lead a dignified life in the United States.
The best leaders are those their people hardly know exist. The next best is a leader who is loved and praised. Next comes the one who is feared. The worst one is the leader that is despised ... The best leaders value their words, and use them sparingly. When they have accomplished their task, the people say, "Amazing! We did it, all by ourselves!
For the law, the clarity of language and the finality of judgment is crucial, because you have to decide a case one way or another - whether it is criminal or civil or whatever. In ordinary life, you do not have to decide things with absolute finality. You do not have to decide on a theory in order to behave in a certain way towards other people.
Part of the reason I'm writing it is to try to figure out what that is myself. It's not like I came back from Iraq and said, "We need to have a conversation, I know exactly what it is." It was just this sort of sense of something missing and then trying to write toward what that was, and to solicit from other people a sense of what that might be.
It is a sin to follow your horoscope because only God knows the future and He won't tell us. Also, we can tell horoscopes are false because according to astrology, Christ would have been a Capricorn, and Capricorn people are cold, ambitious and attracted to Scorpio and Virgo, and we know that Christ was warm, loving, and not attracted to anybody.
'Christian' used to be a throwaway word. People didn't used to use it much. People didn't start self-labeling or getting labeled Christian until the last part of the 20th century. Before that, you might identify as a Baptist, or a Southern Baptist or a Methodist. But there wasn't one identifier that put you in a fold with all the other believers.
I always point people to the article '1,000 True Fans' by Kevin Kelly. If you choose your thousand ideal customers or readers properly and find the single author blog that targets that audience, you never have to do any more marketing. You're done. That is a lesson that very few product developers and marketers have learned, and it's unfortunate.
But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?
I've been meeting with Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino for years, trying to figure out how to fix the concert industry. We're all so overpaid. It's ridiculous. People stopped going to concerts because they can't afford them. The Rolling Stones are charging $650 per ticket! That just makes me speechless. I love the Stones, but I won't be attending.
We have to be emotionally intelligent. It also means that what works one day may not work the next or what works for one group of people many not work for another. I love managerial leadership because it is dynamic. The implication is that we have to stay curious about what compels, what motivates, what inspires, what relates, and what energizes.
Scandal, it bears repeating, undermines monarchies, but rarely ends them. It may be true that, according to a recent editorial in the New York Times, the British monarchy now exists primarily 'for our amusement'. But as long as people find it amusing, and want to be amused by it, they will be happy to see it undermined but uneager to kill it off.
A great library doesn't have to be big or beautiful. It doesn't have to have the best facilities or the most efficient staff or the most users. A great library provides. It is enmeshed in the life of a community in a way that makes it indispensable. A great library is one nobody notices because it is always there, and always has what people need.
My father was a forest entomologist, which means he was aware that spraying forests for spruce budworm was counterproductive in that it didn't really work, and it killed everything else in the forests, and it wasn't good for the people who were exposed to it, either. So he was an early proponent of not doing that, but, of course, nobody listened.
The advance of human freedom - the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time - now depends on us. Our nation - this generation - will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.
I'd be surprised if non-fiction writers hate to be interviewed. We all hate them, because there's really nothing to say except "Read the book." Right? At least with non-fiction, you can kind of convey some information, and people can decide for themselves whether they want more of that kind of information. But with a novel, what am I going to do?
There are some communities that feel you shouldn't give them the publicity, because it's just going to make people curious. There are communities who feel we need to fight them tooth and nail. What we have seen, though, is that ignoring them does not make them go away. If we sit back and let them have free reign, we lose members of our community.
There is something I like about talking to journalists that really goes beyond promotion because you aren't just talking to the journalist, but you are talking through them to people who presumably are fans of the Rolling Stones. The interviews give you a chance to say a few things and maybe clear up some of the things people read about the band.
Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.
Our system works. Over time, people will live better and better. We have a system that unleashes human potential, and now China has a system that unleashes human potential. We will have interruptions. We overshoot and undershoot sometimes, but your kids and grandkids will live better than you. Over time, we move ahead at a pretty damn rapid rate.
One of the important qualities that I think is often overlooked is just energy. It's vitality, and sort of a life force that some people have and others don't. Probably that is connected to a love of whatever it is that they're doing. Another quality that I think is central is confidence. Again, some people are more blessed with that than others.
It can be difficult to be an introvert in church, especially if you happen to be the pastor. Liking to be alone can be interpreted as a judgment on other people's company. Liking to be quiet can be construed as aloofness. There is so much emphasis on community in most congregations that anyone who does not participate risks being labeled a loner.
There are myriad government programs out there to help small businesses. Few people use them effectively. The maze of information makes it difficult for any one person to understand it all, which often leads politicians, and citizens, too, to call for more programs. We don't need more government programs; we just need a better way to access them.
For morning news, people want to know as they are getting dressed, as they are getting ready to leave [for work], "what has happened in the world overnight?" Morning news is a sure-fire way to find out what that is. I personally love and celebrate the fact that you can go to bed and the world is one way and you wake up and it's totally different.
To me there is nothing so admirable as a passionate love-bond between two human begins. Sam loves Frodo and wants to protect him and Frodo is extremely protective of Sam. So what you have are these two people locked into this journey together. They don't need to explain what they are to each other, they don't need to talk about it; they just are.
Few people today realize just how much faith in oneself (that part of oneself which is spiritual, perfect) has to do with achievement, because the great majority of people never seem to conceive of faith as being a genuine creative force. Yet the truth is that not only is Faith a bona fide power, but it is the greatest one we will ever encounter.
I've always enjoyed being in the background, sitting in a cafe, watching people. But now, when I sit in a cafe, sometimes people watch me. It's a challenge. But it's usually people who want to say 'your book transformed my life', or something... so then I'm joyful. One moment before, I didn't want them to recognise me, but when they do, I'm glad.
Thinking about how disturbingly herdlike people become in so many different contexts - mimetic theory forces you to think about that, which is knowledge that's generally suppressed and hidden. As an investor-entrepreneur, I've always tried to be contrarian, to go against the crowd, to identify opportunities in places where people are not looking.
A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one's compatriots than be mocked and detested by them. And there is a level on which the mockery of people, even their hatred, is moving, because it is so blind: It is terrible to watch people cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction.
People know your tragedies and they treat you like you’re not human. Like you’re a three-headed goat. A monster from some other planet. They keep reminding you of your pain. You see how they look at me? They’re stuck on that person I used to be. They can’t see that old life as just a moment in time that I’ve moved on from. It was a horrible life.
For instance," said the boy again, "if Christmas trees were people and people were Christmas trees, we'd all be chopped down, put up in the living room, and covered in tinsel, while the trees opened our presents." "What does that have to do with it?" asked Milo. "Nothing at all," he answered, "but it's an interesting possibility, don't you think?
What I want to try to prove is that artistic games, when done properly, can still be a commercial success. By doing that, I will be able to essentially shift the industry and create more opportunity for people to create artistic games. In a way, making money is important for us right now. Not because we need it, but because the industry needs it.
I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things. My first three novels were all about families. Things that happen in a house within a family, because you're a child or because you want to keep the family together, you suffer things you might not have had to suffer if you weren't in that situation.
You can say a lot of bad things about Tiny Cooper. I know, because I have said them. But for a guy who knows absolutely nothing about how to conduct his own relationships, Tiny Cooper is kind of brilliant when it comes to dealing with other people's heartbreak. Tiny is like some gigantic sponge soaking up the pain of lost love everywhere he goes.
Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them; for an appearance that reifies them; for roles that wrest them from authentic life; for a time whose passage defines and confines them.
There are instances: [Henry David] Thoreau read [John] Wordsworth, [John] Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and you got national parks. It took a century for this to happen, for artistic values to percolate down to where honoring the relation of people's imagination to the land, or beauty, or to wild things, was issued in legislation.
I think the other side of that is embracing the claustrophobia, and that's what a huge piece of this show is, just watching people go through having to be stuck in that. I think the audience is going to feel some of that. It might not be comfortable, but it's really cool to just be experiencing that along with the characters that you're watching.
I knew Arizona's SB 1070 would be controversial when I introduced it, but I did not expect the national immigration debate to revolve around a state law. While the anti-American open-borders Left attack me and the law as 'racist,' 'nativist' and their other empty smear words, the vast majority of the people of Arizona and America support the law.
Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up black men and women and pull all nature’s knowledge to you. Turn ye around and make a conquest of everything North and South, East and West. And then we you have wrought well, you will have merited God's blessing, you will become God's chosen people and naturally you'll become leaders of the world.
I don't want the people I'm with on this journey to feel like I'm filming them all the time. I don't want them to constantly feel as though they're being watched. So I will have the camera ready at all times, but I will only film when something is really worth filming. Those are the moments when the person being filmed is usually not aware of it.
Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what's happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.
If we are willing to act violently in pursuit of a peripheral interest, everyone can be certain that, when a vital interest is at stake, we will be still more violent. 'Credibility' is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we'll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.
We've discussed the public sector union people. We are messing with their bread and butter. They have their hands in the treasuries of all states in which they operate and the US Treasury. They have their hands there. That's how they live. Now, we're broke and the states are broke for a multitude of reasons. What they're being paid is among them.
In 56 A.D. [the apostle] Paul wrote that over 500 people had seen the risen Jesus and that most of them were still alive (1 Corinthians 15:6ff.). It passes the bounds of credibility that the early Christians could have manufactured such a tale and then preached it among those who might easily have refuted it simply by producing the body of Jesus.
You believe that flag burning shows disrespect towards those who have fought to preserve our freedoms. Punishing protestors shows an even more profound disrespect for the ideals that these people died for. An intact flag is worthless if it no longer stands for freedom. A flag burned to ashes challenges us to remember just exactly what freedom is.
I think that you're very aware that you're shooting a 3D film for a movie that's beloved to the fan community, and that it's going to be on people's radar, and that you have to be excellent. I think it evolved over time how epic it has become. The first time we went to Comic-Con after we finished shooting I went, "oh my goodness, oh my goodness!"