Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the middle of the last century there was a reason to go to war. This time around the war was a really bad idea and I think the only people that benefited from it were Halliburton and people that made money from it, but that's not an excuse to have a war. Killing American kids so Halliburton can make money is not a righteous reason to go to war.
I trust the mystery. I trust what comes in silence and what comes in nature where there's no diversion. I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant, and real. And the process of deep listening with attention and intention catalyzes and mobilizes exactly what's needed at that time.
I was 23, and I was in L.A. while on hiatus [as an understudy] from Biloxi Blues on Broadway. The guy that I'd been studying with had been fired for horsing around on stage with Matthew Broderick, and they were really anxious to get me back into the play. So I was in a great situation, and at the time, I definitely wasn't thinking about television
I do definitely get boxed into this #BlackGirlMagic social activist category. But it makes me think, "Well, maybe people are able to start thinking about that concept earlier and will hopefully be inspired to delve deeper into it and research it more." I think that's just how the media works. It's just very good at compartmentalizing human beings.
I think there are great roles for women in television because there is time to allow those characters to evolve. Even if you're the wife or the girlfriend or whatever it is that we women are, playing those things on TV, they are much more drawn out and there are greater arcs for the role. The roles are more integral to the complexity of the story.
My life is one that I've aimed for - I've always wanted to be an actor who worked in film and television and was able to provide for himself and his family. That was always a goal of mine. Now that I'm doing that, I think we have this idea, "Once that's achieved, all complaints will leave and I will be happy and be filled!" And I didn't have that.
When I hear a great new record, especially when it's by someone that I respect and admire, then a part of me is like, Why didn't I think of that? Why didn't I write that record? It makes you sick, but in a way it can be a great thing. It makes you want to go back to the lab and start writing again. Maybe it will inspire you to try a little harder.
It's very hard to look in a mirror and see anything which resembles what one feels one's self to be. I think that discomfort, that dislocation, disintegration - that raw lack of feeling whole - that dysmorphia - is a very good place, in this moment, to hunt for the kind of experience which really requires the means of poetry to be grasped or felt.
I don't think the Republicans would appreciate the comparison, but they're exactly like the Labor Party in England in the 1970s. They're letting their extremists take them straight down. The same thing is going to happen - they had to disappear for a while and when they reinvented themselves they did it with moderates, they did it with Tony Blair.
I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions... Don't take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can't. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.
In the Middle East, America has spent as of four weeks ago $6 trillion. Think of it. And, by the way, the Middle East is in what - I mean, it's not even close - it's in much worse shape than it was 15 years ago. If our Presidents would have gone to the beach for 15 years, we would be in much better shape than we are right now, that I can tell you.
A lot of people do things out of fear. A lot of people make choices, based on thinking, they won’t have a career in five years. I know where I am, I know what I do is worth something and does not have an expiration date on it. I’m not making choices — in any capacity of my life, with any kind of endorsement, with any kind of product — out of fear.
I never really expected "Hurricane" to be censored and banned around the world, but I think the good thing that came from it was that it created a dialogue, a conversation, a debate and a discussion. And that's a great thing. It brought all of us together in a unique way. And it made us look a little deeper in ourselves. I think it's a good thing.
I think I may have too much of a scientific mindset and am always looking for the caveats and qualifications in any situation. I never thought seriously of doing a PhD until relatively late in the day. I was always diligent at the book-work at university but the brightest amongst my friends all seemed to have a more intuitive grasp of the subject.
How can non-existence get sick of itself? Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.
Singing when no one else is around is always good. I especially like belters. Good, loud singing is probably better medicine than half the stuff they sell in pill bottles, and it's cheaper, too. I also think people should never turn down an opportunity to hold a baby. There's something about the feel of a new baby in your arms that just fixes you.
When you're a music director, you have people constantly sending you music and trying to get - I mean, I'm sure you have the exact same thing when you do a magazine - that you have people constantly wanting to get your attention. And I think I learnt a lot from being on that end of things, when I was trying to book the tour, the first tour we did.
I know I have to do the right thing. And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don't have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life? Instead, you procrastinate and think about it and put it off and think about it some more until that one little pebble grows into a giant block inside your head.
I don't think there's any evidence to support that kind of criticism. I think that what we have attempted to do is to say that environmental concerns should certainly be addressed. We're not suggesting that any kind of development trample upon the existing laws that are there to insure that we maintain as high a quality of environment as possible.
The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.
I think I sort of realized it was an international thing when we went to South Korea for The Fast [and the Furious] 6 premiere. We knew nothing about South Korea, and we came through the sliding doors [at the airport] with my luggage and there were like 60 fans with Luketeer banners: "We're your Korea Luketeers." It was like, wow, this is amazing.
The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.
If Margaret Thatcher were running for president today we wouldn't have focus groups and we wouldn't have one day focusing on 'change' and the next day focusing on likability. If Margaret Thatcher were campaigning, we would be treated to a smorgasbord of great ideas, proposals for the future of the country. Nobody would even be thinking about that.
I think that popular culture takes a long time to catch up to what's actually happening in the world. Women have had to take care of themselves for quite a while. Actually, not had to take of themselves, but have wanted to take care of themselves, so I think it's a big transition that our country and our society has been going through a long time.
My artistic practice always involved diversity to the groups of people in which I would find camaraderie, friendship, colleagues, whereas I feel, to be honest, a lot of those circles were just completely white. I think that's something that's unstated or stated with bravado. That is not anywhere near part my experience, especially as a New Yorker.
Well, it's not all the same, but there are a lot of parallels. I'm not sure how to answer [on psychology background], but I think when I was studying psychology I had a professor and a friend who would talk about "process" all the time. Your process, his process, the group's process. There's some carryover from that discussion to my creative work.
I think the anger that is being directed to universities and so-called elites at universities is actually an anger that's displaced from politicians (who promise to make things better and never do), from employers, it's an anger at the economic system that has put so many of these people out of the kind of work that once was so satisfying to them.
I think you're the sort of person who finds money on the ground and waves it in the air and asks if anyone has lost it. I think you cry in movies that aren't even sad because you have a soft heart, though you don't let it show. I think you do things that scare you, and that makes you braver than those adrenaline junkies who bungee-jump off bridges.
You know, it's a funny thing about writers. Most people don't stop to think of books being written by people much like themselves. They think that writers are all dead long ago--they don't expect to meet them in the street or out shopping. They know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces. And most writers like it that way.
For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.
You should have the opportunity to be more than one person with different people because you have that within you. It's not like you're faking it. If everyone knows you so well and can always get a hold of you, then you're stuck to this thing that people think you are. You should have the opportunity to reinvent yourself. Because you do. Naturally.
One of the things I think the next president has to do is to stop fanning people's fears. If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division, then they become fearful and conflicted and divided. And if we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance, then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful.
I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.
I'm not sure where I heard it or why I believed it but when I was in my mid-twenties, a few words changed my approach to and experience of prayer. The words were these: 'Every thought you think is a prayer. Every word you speak is a prayer. Every act in which you engage is a prayer, because the Spirit of God lives in you.' Now, how awesome is that?
We don't know for a fact that Donald Trump did. We only think we know because it's been reported by how many unconfirmed, anonymous sources? Two scoops of ice cream, Trump's so selfish, guests only get one. The contrast is stark. Trump on this trip and the Trump in Washington. My contention is that Trump is Trump. What's different is the reporting.
I don't think I've ever googled myself. But I do read some things... I mean, if I know that I was with an interviewer and I kind of figure that he or she got something bad or something good from the interview, then I'll read the piece when it comes out. But other than that, I'd have to have a reason to read it - and, usually, I don't have a reason.
On the one hand, we're constantly told about recycling and cutting back, and on the other hand we have to buy the next gadget that comes along three weeks after the last one you bought. It's absolutely insane. We've been suckered into buying and buying and upgrading and upgrading. We're being given two very different mantras at the moment, I think.
Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody's existence on this planet? Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up, that's just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?
Memory is knowledge; character is the box of values and habits in which our knowledge knocks around. People with a lot of knowledge thrown together in a box that encourages social intercourse and experimentation tend to come up with good ideas, which are the engine of change. Think of Silicon Valley in California, or Oxbridge in the United Kingdom.
The day I'm inaugurated, this country looks at itself differently and the world looks at America differently. If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am a messenger who can deliver that message around the world in a way that no other candidate can do.
I think we'll have a bigger conversation first within the Republican Party, then with the American people about what's the proper role of the federal government, i do hope that Common Core will be one more, one more reason for us to have this bigger debate, this bigger conversation about the proper role of the federal government in local education.
But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.
I'm always surprised when anything about the band connects. But I love the fact that it's hard for people to understand. We've said before that it's always been a great thing to get certain people to go away thinking, 'Oh dear, she can't play the drums!' 'Fine, if you think it's all a gimmick, go away!' It weeds out people who wouldn't care anyway.
I think President Obama is the most radical president this nation's ever seen. And in particular, I think he is a true believer in government control of the economy and of our everyday lives. In my judgment, we are facing what I consider to be the epic battle of our generation, quite literally the battle over whether we remain a free market nation.
I do not think there is such a thing as a "clash of civilizations." When I say that Muslims as Muslims cannot be represented in the West, I was being ironic, and also referring to the fact that ninety percent of the time when people talk about "the problem of Muslims" in the West, it is to complain about the fact that Muslims have not "integrated."
With all due respect to Mick Jagger, who is one of my idols, I think it's a mistake to leap around and sing at 53. When I started, there weren't any women I looked up to. It was Mick. I never saw anybody go on a stage and have that tongue-in-cheek attitude. It was all straight, including the Beatles. I love his attitude, hands on hips and lips out.
When the Egyptians were building the pyramids or the Romans were building roads, or you had the westward push with the railroads, I don't think that the guys on the ground were spending a lot of time thinking, 'Hey, hundreds or thousands of years from now they will look back at the brick I have just laid down here and say that I changed the world!'
What I don't like from the president's administration is this sort of, 'I'll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.' I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. And I think it's part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it's always got to be someone's fault instead of the fact that sometimes accidents happen.
Primary and especially secondary education is extremely important in preventing trafficking, it allows children to develop critical thinking skills to be able to defend themselves from traffickers and to have the skills that will enable them to have gainful employment to be able to support their families in other ways than being sexually exploited.
I think there's confusion around what the point of social networks is. A lot of different companies characterized as social networks have different goals - some serve the function of business networking, some are media portals. What we're trying to do is just make it really efficient for people to communicate, get information and share information.