Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A lot of the so-called systems composers have this thing that the system is always right. You don't fiddle with it at all. Well, I don't think that. I think the system is as right as you judge it to be. If for some reason you don't like a bit of it you must trust your intuition on that. I don't take a doctrinaire approach to systems.
I liked the idea of having a record that's reggae-influenced but not musically, just lyrically. I think there's so much about Rasta culture that's interesting. Just the idea of preaching one-ness, that we're all in this together. Which I suppose is at the root of most any religion. You're gonna find it, if taken in the right context.
As much as the Democrats try to change the subject, this election will be about Barack Obama, period. Mitt's speech last night hit all the right notes, but this fight is not about him. He's just the vessel. Now the question is, does this guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. who thinks the private sector is doing fine get another four years?
I think a lot of the reason people are attracted to the Keystone pipeline is because at least we're doing something. There's a fear that society will collapse if it's not acting. To contrast those actions with other actions is important in making it feel plausible. Maybe we must have the size of the dream meet the size of the threat.
I think the hardest part is figuring out what to say no to because the whole start of your career is just begging anybody to let you perform or to contribute music to something. Then it's like turning on a faucet because the moment it's on, people are like, "Oh, you can do stuff? All right. Well, you want to do it every single thing?
My dad's a musician, and he taught me how to play when I was three, I think, so I've been playing ever since. It's something I've always done. And when you're really young, and you play music for people, people get really excited, so you get this inner sense that you are good at it, even though I've always been really not good at it.
How can you say one style is better than another? You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you've given up something.. I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's is going to happen, that's going to be the whole new scene.
I think that contradictions, unless they're understood, unless they're analyzed, unless they're thoughtfully probed, unless people have a sense of what those contradictions mean - there's just as much of a chance that they'll move into embracing fascism as there is that they'll move into a more radical conception of democracy itself.
I think the thing is that you're very affected by your early life, and I think that if you ever had that feeling of outsider, or loneliness or whatever, it just doesn't leave you. You can be happy and successful, whatever, but I think that thing stays inside of you. It doesn't ever really leave you. You kind of always will have that.
Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice-- The weakness and the wickedness of luxury-- The negligence--the apathy--the evils Of sensual sloth--produces ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master, However harsh and hard in his own bearing.
...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.
I think it does because if you think of where "The Daily Show" was when I inherited it from Jon Stewart, I was in a space where, essentially, everything seemed like it was on track, you know, in terms of - from a progressive point of view, you know, you're looking at Republicans who, yes, were in control of many facets of government.
To live means to experience-through doing, feeling, thinking. Experience takes place in time, so time is the ultimate scarce resource we have. Over the years, the content of experience will determine the quality of life. Therefore one of the most essential decisions any of us can make is about how one's time is allocated or invested.
I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away.
In theatre you can't ad lib, so you want to pick really good material, like David Mamet or Shakespeare or whatever. You want to be really careful about what you do. But in the movies, you do have more wiggle-room. You do have more opportunities to improvise. It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script.
I think the joy of any soap opera is it is always there. You are allowed into this world for a little while and it's safe in that you are watching other people go through some troubles rather than yourself. It's there every night, and there is something special about that sort of terrestrial television experience for a mass audience.
I was a really, really serious kid. And a really kind of controlling kid. Like I had things that, now, people would say are like - there's a name for many disorders as we know - but I would say, "If I pick this rubber band, then this will happen." It was that kind of want to control things, which I think all kids have to some extent.
Members of the media, Jim Acosta of CNN and Glenn Thrush, formerly Politico, now the New York Times, and all of them actually think the Statue of Liberty is the symbol of immigration. And they believe the Emma Lazarus poem that is on the pedestal is the equivalent of immigration policy in the United States. They're not the only ones.
I mean I think that when you've got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, you naturally fall to thinking about the deep mysteries. Where do we come from? Where does the world come from? Where does the universe come from?
Great stories happen all around you every day. At the time they’re happening, you don’t think of them as stories. You probably don’t think about them at all. You experience them. You enjoy them. You learn from them. You’re inspired by them. They only become stories if someone is wise enough to share them. That’s when a story is born.
Here's my theory: I think both fiction and role-playing games involve a narrative journey. When that journey never ends, it feeds an addictive cycle. When that journey has an end, it brings us back to ourselves and to our own lives. This return allows us to reflect. Perhaps this is why I prefer a closed structure for books and games.
Many people are now starting to experience a new energy filtering down through the density of mass consciousness. This energy stirs your spirit to find freedom of expression and amplifies the voice within your heart. This new planetary energy facilitates people in thinking more about the heart and its potentials in all human affairs.
Avoid destructive thinking. Improper negative thoughts sink people. A ship can sail on water all around the world many, many times, but just let enough water get into the ship and it will sink. Just so with the human mind. Let enough negative thoughts or improper thoughts get into the human mind and the person sinks just like a ship.
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. And then he feels that perhaps there isn't.
By the time of the Singularity, there won't be a distinction between humans and technology. This is not because humans will have become what we think of as machines today, but rather machines will have progressed to be like humans and beyond. Technology will be the metaphorical opposable thumb that enables our next step in evolution.
I haven't given it (achieving 3,000 hits) much thought. I was taught a certain approach, how to come to the ballpark. I try not to do too much thinking about things like that. In this society we measure success in different ways. Three thousand (hits) represents success over a career, not a season. It'll be nice to get to that point.
It so happens that certain songs becomes part of culture, and culture is a form of preserving patterns. Yes, we're Mexican, and we're proud to be, but we're also human. But like all cultures, there are retrograde elements and evolutionary elements. I think we'll chose to head towards the evolutionary ones and leave the others behind.
I think hip-hop has changed. When I first came out, hip-hop was more of a kind of way to learn about new places, new things. What are kids doing on the East coast, what are kids doing here. Then it left that and is like a party mode. I think it's going back to people wanting to get messages and wanting to learn things from the music.
Yeah, people seem to really relate to it and feel moved by it. It's been the most positively received of all my movies so far. I don't know why. I like it just as much as I like my others, but people think this one is the best or the most interesting. I'll take it, though. I wouldn't want them to be saying my films are getting worse.
When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul-then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness.
There was something really wonderful about being able to feel confident about doing my first exhibition in China, that people would have no trouble recognising the images and understanding my work. I also have a lot of freedom in the way I use colour, and I think that kind of freedom in colour is also understandable in every culture.
Some ISPs are blocking all BitTorrent traffic, because BitTorrent can be used to share files in a piratical way. Hollywood lobbying groups are trying to pass laws which would force ISPs to block or degrade BitTorrent traffic, too. Personally, I think this is like closing down freeways because a bank robber could use them to get away.
We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.
I set out to show that there exists single creative activity,which is displayed alike in the arts and in the sciences.It is wrong to think of science as a mechanical record of facts, and it is wrong to think of the arts as remote and private fancies. What makes each human, what makes them universal, is the stamp of the creative mind.
In the past, I used to think that it is fundamental and natural to have everything. But I realized that is not true. Instead I realized that those are things to be grateful for. After that realization, I became comfortable. Even if I don’t have it I am grateful. Such a realization also made me understand that is a way to love myself.
When people in a democracy are not educated in the art of living -- to strengthen their conscience, compassion, and ability to question and think critically -- they can be easily manipulated by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship.
I kind of play like a guy. I don't hold grudges. I don't get dramatic with things. If somebody slide tackles me in training and we leave the field, I'm still talking to them. I think that there's very few of us out there that can just take confrontation, and if you've got an issue with something, you can go to that person and say it.
One of the things I like to do is people's hearts are on their sleeve, whether it's a good or a bad heart. And I think that's one of the things living in a world with Powers would do: it's too theatrical not to express yourself constantly. It would change them socially and sexually, everything would be altered because of superheroes.
Jackson [Rathbone], who plays Jasper Cullen. He’s such a mysterious kid. I’ve been friends with him for a long time, and I still don’t get him, and I don’t think he gets himself! He’s really friendly, but there’s this mystery about him and he’s talented in so many ways. It’s too much talent for one person. He reminds me of a vampire.
I think the biggest shift for me is - this is going to sound like a wanky actor, but - getting in touch with, and learning to not just appreciate, but actually really enjoy being a woman. Because for so long I was a jock, and I was an athlete, and I was a tomboy, and people would joke about like, fancy dress, you should go as a girl.
You're talking to investors - and investors, they look at you and they realize, you know, not every business they invest in are the founders or the people running it going to have every bit of skill - and I think they looked at me and realized, OK, this is a guy who's got a lot - I'm much older than the usual run of people they fund.
A compassionate attitude helps you communicate more easily with your fellow human beings. As a result, you make more genuine friends and the atmosphere around you is more positive, which gives you greater inner strength. This inner strength helps you spontaneously concern yourself with others, instead of thinking only about yourself.
All I want to say is that anybody, well, from the Democratic side of the fence who thinks that - who's terrified of the possibility of President [Donald] Trump better vote, better get active, better get involved, because this man has got some momentum and we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.
When you have a lot of time, when you're not working a full-time job, you have a lot of time to question things and think about things. Some of it's about romantic relationships, some of it's about drugs, about religion, about this mass of humanity traveling through life doing all this crazy stuff, not really knowing why or for what.
I think that Republican analyst Steve Schmidt had a great line about Donald Trump, which is, Americans clearly voted for change , but they didn't vote for chaos. I think people are feeling unnerved all around the world, because they see a chaotic set of directions coming out of the White House, and they're not sure what it all means.
One attribute of the human being is the potential to keep on growing, to keep on developing. And I think there's room in each of us. I hate to hear someone say, oh well, that man or that woman is sixty or seventy or eighty or ninety or a hundred, so he's finished. There's always something that can be transformed on the upward spiral.
I know there's a part of the feminist world that is like, "Hey, screw 'em, we'll do our own thing over here," and I can see there's a value in that. But a kind of nudgy part of me thinks: No. I want access, and I want my daughters to have access to the exact same thing, because we all know there's no such thing as separate but equal.
Somewhere along the way, the idea, which I think was initially to get some fair transaction between people, went out the window. And what came in was, the most you can get and the least you can give. That's why cars are the way they are nowadays. It's just an erosion of all the things that were true and right about the original idea.
I don't want to pick on Deutsche Bank, but I think the world of the regulated financial conglomerate, it is a strange thing. There is nothing in common between writing checks and running branch offices, issuing credit cards - those are good businesses, but they really have zero in common with M&A advice. They're a different customer.
I spent money, and I kept thinking, 'I get one more movie and I'll wipe these bills out,' but that movie never came. That black pride, I said, 'Man, I'm going to hang in there, I'm going to pay these bills.' So you owe a million dollars. 'I can pay that.' OK, fines, fees, now you owe two and a half million. 'But I didn't do nothin'!'