Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm told there's a saying from those ancient times, kalos kai agathos, when someone or something is good and beautiful on the outside, but is also good and noble on the inside in terms of character and in terms of purpose. And I think that's a fine description of the friendship that exists between the Greek people and the American people.
I'm against ObamaCare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.... I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering... I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.
Scotland has always been independent. We have our own legal system, our own culture; I don't see the issue. We are different and I think we should celebrate those differences within the union. I can see what would be lost, but don't necessarily see what would be gained by breaking away. What does upset me is that I can't vote in Scotland.
The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?
Circumstances do not push or pull. They are daily lessons to be studied and gleaned for new knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom that is applied will bring about a brighter tomorrow. A person who is depressed is spending too much time thinking about the way things are now and not enough time thinking about how he wants things to be.
I think my message goes out to the entire spectrum of political parties. I'm supported by the Tea Party, the Conservative Party and the Republican Party. I come from a Democratic world. My world is moderate Democrats, Reagan-type Democrats if you want, the blues or whatever you call them, the Blue Dogs. That's been my world, historically.
I think the greatest gift actually acting is that I have a true fascination and love for people, and the way they are, and all the choices they made in life and all the different paths they took. I feel like acting gives me an opportunity to dig a little bit into that. That's great because it's eye-opening and it makes you an open person.
I live on a boat, which is in the midst of renovation. I figure the good Lord will put me in the right place and hopefully I'll have the right clothes on. I think what we're going to do is bring the boat through the Panama Canal. My husband has always wanted to do that. So I think we'll do that and have the boat in Florida for the winter.
To sustain a career in show business, you have to have a certain amount of delusion, because it's such an insane way to make a living. The idea that you're going to say, "Oh, I think I deserve to be paid attention to, and people should listen to what I have to say, and everybody should look at me," that's a little bit delusional in a way.
I think the biggest problem in our country is mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex. From the Rockefeller drug laws to stand your ground to stop and frisk, all these are pointing people, especially and disproportionately black and brown people, towards the criminal-justice system. It's depleting whole generations of people.
But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. it's quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body... Ha! That's something else again! It has a cultivated taste, as they say, it knows what it wants. A heart doesn't choose, and one always ends up by loving.
I enjoy telling these stories that I ultimately think get a disservice on a lot of network television. I enjoy getting people to change their perspective. I enjoy pushing myself into learning and understanding things from a very different point of view. It's scary to do that. It's scary to kind of put yourself in somebody else's position.
The Republicans didn't get rolled by anybody. Chuck Schumer didn't outsmart Mitch McConnell, and Nancy Pelosi sure as hell did not outsmart Paul Ryan. I don't care what you think of Ryan, he's not an idiot, folks. These people are not dumb. They're not sitting up there thinking, "All we gotta do is be nice to the Democrats and the media."
Truth is power, but only when one has patience and requires of it no immediate effect. And one must have no specific aims. Somehow, lack of an agenda is the greatest power. Sometimes it is better not to think in terms of plans; here months may mean nothing, and also years. Truth must be sought for its own sake, its holy, divine greatness.
The sign, which says: "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door!" - Of course, I've read it. Why do you think I want it opened?.. To see why they wanted it shut, of course. This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.
You usually get one or the other, you get someone who knows how to tell a story but they don't necessarily know about light and camera and rhythm, or you get someone who can make beautiful images but they can't necessarily tell a great story. He does both and I think he's going to be one of the film-makers that our time is remembered for.
The essence of procrastination lies in not doing what you think you should be doing, a mental contortion that surely accounts for the great psychic toll the habit takes on people. This is the perplexing thing about procrastination: although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy.
You're sincere, but in order not to upset your views you avoid talking with people who think differently. You pick your thoughts from conversations with people like yourself, from books written by people like yourself. In physics they call it resonance. You start out with modest opinions, but they match and build each other up to a scale.
I'm not sure about that role any longer. The role used to be to mix things up and I think to a great extent it still is, but the quality of the work of the political cartoon has been succeeded by the wisecrack, the gag cartoon, so that the cartoonist becomes more of the equivalent of the Jay Leno monologues, or David Letterman monologues.
Sour Patch, Swedish Fish. I love candy, man. I can't go without candy. And when I'm recording, I always have a TV on with cartoons - on mute, though. When I'm recording, I like to look at the TV now and then and see some crazy, wacky stuff. When you're thinking creative, it just keeps you creative. Everybody got their way of making music.
Sitting with a deck of cards in your hand all day is an obsession. Visiting print shops and bookstores and libraries is an obsession. And writing about this is an obsession. I think, in general, most collectors are obsessed. I think the only form of a rationalized greed is when you're collecting something you are supposedly serious about.
I can't read my poem "Distracted by an Ergonomic Bicycle" without thinking of Seattle, where the events of the poem took place, and I can't read "In Defense of the Semicolon" without thinking of Toronto - but why should that matter to anyone else? If another reader imagines "In Defense of the Semicolon" taking place in New Orleans, great.
I think language is a system that we have devised to negotiate a series of more amorphous entities. It's a layer you can use to see where those things exist, but if you don't have anyone speaking anymore, those things are still there. The things that language stands for do not require humans, and in fact are often trampled down by humans.
I do believe in God, but I think it's very healthy for a believer to spend time in the pragmatism of agnosticism, and I think God appreciates agnostics trying to make a science of it and going, "I will not believe any further than that." I enjoy that kind of engineering mind. In no way did it ever feel blasphemous to me as a man of faith.
Maybe I'm not giving people in the audience enough credit for actually thinking about what they're singing, but it's awesome when a rock'n'roll groove and melody can transport something from Barometer Rising or whatever [ed: it's from 1958's The Watch That Ends the Night] into [Toronto's] Molson Ampitheatre and have people just owning it.
I studied law before I became a filmmaker, and I actually have a great belief in the justice system and the rule of law. I think it's the thing that separates us from animals. I really believe in the rule of law because it's an attempt to bring rational accountability to human behavior, which has a great capability of becoming irrational.
I am perhaps being charitable but I think there are a bunch of people out there who feel stupid. Some will be feeling stupid for stupid and evil reasons - HEY, TRUMP HASN'T DEPORTED ALL THE BROWN PEOPLE YET - and some will feel stupid for good reasons, such as that he lied about everything. But I think being made to feel stupid is damage.
If you'd have asked me two years ago, I'd have been like "No, anything and everything. Go for it." Now, I want to focus on doing the best I can each time. But I think it's hard for me to only put out one record a year. Because I get too antsy. But it's good I'm learning to do that, because each record counts. And you should make it count.
I love the fact that we can't explain coincidences. I think it's like sometimes you walk into a crowded room and you'll see a stranger and you feel as if you know her better than the friends that you came with. And the very fact that you can't explain it is what gives it its power, that it lies in some deeper or mysterious realm, I think.
I carry my own film guys with me now. People think that's a huge expense, but with technology like it is these days, it's not. You can film videos and everything with a Canon Mark II, and shoot a movie. They're doing it for next to nothing, by comparison. I can do ten videos for a project for the price of one mainstream video in the past.
The American people recognize that their careers or their kids' careers are going to have to be more dynamic. That they might not be working at a single plant for 30 years. That they might have to change careers. They might have to get more education. They might have to retool or retrain. And I think the American people are game for that.
It has been a masterful fight-back by the big banks. We the paying public can't do anything much except admit defeat and settle back for the next set of bills. In the meantime, perhaps, we should try and think of a name for the new economic system, which certainly isn't capitalism ... The most accurate term would probably be "bankocracy".
We intend to do is invite Barack Obama and the American administration and the general public to think about Islam as an alternative really, we believe that the problems in the world today aren't necessarily because of people and they need to go back to the divine law and so ours is a call to go back to the divine law and implement Islam.
You know, I think when you are unemployed, especially for a long time, it's hard to be inspired or hopeful almost about anything. So it's tough, especially when there has been such gridlock here in D.C. You know, when we are fighting and can't get anything done, whether you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, no one wins.
You would think after all the hours I’d spent with Gale– watching him talk and laugh and frown– that I would know all there was to know about his lips. But I hadn’t imagined how warm they would feel pressed against my own. Or how those hands [...] could entrap me… I vaguely remember my fingers, curled tightly closed, resting on his chest.
I memorize my lines and I show up. I think it's just instinctual, and sometimes it's wrong and the director says, "No, do it this way." And then I can change, because I didn't spend all night practicing it this one way. All I do to get ready for the day is the night before, I read my lines once or twice, memorize them, and then I show up.
I think a lot of us are looking for the same thing. I feel very lucky to have a definitive moment where I know everything shifted in me, and it was the moment I read that quote. Because I thought, A. That's everything I know about vulnerability. It's not winning, it's not losing, it's showing up and being seen. B. That's who I want to be.
Most people define themselves by what they do - 'I'm a musician.' Then one day it occurred to me that I'm only a musician when I'm playing music - or writing music, or talking about music. I don't do that 24 hours a day. I'm also a father, a son, a husband, a citizen - I mean, when I go to vote, I'm not thinking of myself as 'a musician.'
Barring a theoretical resolution, which I think is unlikely, you either have to say there are zillions of parallel universes out there that we can't observe at present or you have to say there was a plan. I actually find the argument of the existence of a God who did the planning more compelling than the bubbling of all these multiverses.
I think that one of the causes of these repeated failures is that our best and greatest men have greatly underestimated the size of this question (slavery). They have constantly brought forward small cures for great sores-plasters too small to cover the wound. That is one reason that all settlements have proved so temporary-so evanescent.
I kept saying I got sick of listening to people's productions, like people who had no ideas, no songs, nothing to say but could still con people's ears into thinking those songs were there by the application of production. I kind of wanted my record a little more honest than that: "Well, this is us. We put a microphone on it. Here it is."
I have no fear of death, so I don't think about it. I love the adrenalin kick that danger brings. Others get their kicks bungee jumping from tall buildings. I'm very, very competitive. I want to be the best at everything I do. It's not driving - it's everything - it might be playing my guitar, I try to be the best at it as I possibly can.
I don't think I'm saying anything wrong. And that's just how I judge it. I believe it's not so much about the people, that's just my take. I think making it about people is the wrong way to do it. I think it's the systems. The systems are broken; the systems are what need to be fixed. I think there's bad people in every sector of America.
Power lies in the details, and the tenacious pursuit of such hidden levers can pay off enormously. While you don't want to get a reputation as a prissy worrywart, worrying about the details in private is important. You may think you are the world's greatest speaker, but if the auditorium's sound system is singing static - well, forget it.
Our humanist community should be thinking more about demonstrating the fundamental truth that goodness requires neither God nor the belief in God by organizing together as a community to do good. Less money spent on billboards that just make us feel good about ourselves and more on soup kitchens and organized visits to the sick and dying.
I've dabbled in running around on stage, and at certain times it's nice to step away from the anchor of the piano and use a handheld microphone and connect with the audience, but I think my soul as a performer is just a little bit more connected to the instrument. To just sort of sit and sing - that feels like the most natural fit for me.
I think Barack Obama is a socialist. I think he cares for his country - don't get me wrong about that - but I think he truly misunderstands what this country was based upon, the values that America was based upon, which was free enterprise and having the ability to risk your capital and having a chance to have a return on your investment.
I really think you cannot ever escape your history, what you've done, who you are, and things you've tried to hide. Even if no one ever finds out the secret you're trying to keep, the cost of that keeping has been so great, that it's destroyed you anyway. In all my writing, there are people who desperately wish the past is not what it is.
I think companies trying to exercise a so-called inversion should be hit with an exit tax. So I want to change behaviors, and I am deeply distressed about quarterly capitalism, because I think it is causing businesses to make decisions that are not helping the long-term profitability of American corporations or the success of our economy.
I was thinking maybe about being a lawyer. I realized I was interested in becoming a priest at one point. I was just interested in stuff where I could do something I really believed in. And then, I realized if I become an actor, I don't have to choose. I get to do everything. It's worked out so far. But what I really want to do is direct.