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War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle.
Polygraph tests are 20th-century witchcraft.
I’m constantly thinking about what I’ll do next. I never count on music being a career of longevity. I mean, longevity is key, and I hope that it lasts, but you just don’t know, because it’s not in your hands, you don’t make the decision.
I’m almost a full-time mom.
My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However, she came to England on a visit and never went back.
Goodness is beauty in the best estate.
Marriage, even the best marriages are tough.
The public sector certainly includes the Department of Labor. Those are jobs that are available. They are open and they are good paying jobs. The government as a whole has been actually retrenching under President Clinton’s leadership.
It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar – that I call an achievement.
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.
Women like to sit down with trouble – as if it were knitting.
Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.
The guy who knows about computers is the last person you want to have creating documentation for people who don’t understand computers.
I had been involved in U.S. intelligence in Berlin, Germany, while in the military and had worked with a contact with the Central Intelligence Agency office there.
I put on fifteen pounds of muscle, so that was a lot of eating chicken and a high protein, low-carb diet. Also a lot of heavy lifting and a very different kind of training with an ex-navy SEAL guy who wanted to kill me every time I got with him. In a good way.
The Peace Corps is guilty of enthusiasm and a crusading spirit. But we’re not apologetic about it.
Stay humble. Always answer your phone – no matter who else is in the car.
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.
I think each movie-making process is a very exhausting and satisfying and fulfilling experience for me.
Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!
A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don’t ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren’t blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.
Acceptance of the power of God in one’s life lays the groundwork for personal commitment to both science and Christianity, which so often have been in conflict.
The hippy movement was a failure.
The real estate agent had to go door-to-door in the apartment building we wanted to rent, asking if it was OK for this interracial family – my mom is white and I was a 1-year-old half-African kid – to live in the apartment building.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
This is a country for, of, and by the people not for, of, and by the government. If we turn it over to them we cannot complain about what they’re doing because this is a natural course of men and we have to hold their feet to the fire.
How many deaf people do you know in real life? Unless they live in a cave, or are 14, which seems to be true for most people in this business, what could I possibly tell them that they don’t already know?
I genuinely don’t feel that anything that’s been written or said about me has overshadowed my music, and that’s the most important thing as far as I’m concerned.
What appeals to me? There are things, points of view, uses of the language, habits of dress, ways of thought and believing that came to me from my grandparents and came to them from theirs. Things that are of good use in any situation, no matter what the future may hold.
People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European, born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe, met my dad, fell in love, and then moved back to Rome, where I was raised, between Rome and Hamburg.
And if the imam and the Muslim leadership in that community is so intent on building bridges, then they should voluntarily move the mosque away from ground zero and move it whether it’s uptown or somewhere else, but move it away from that area, the same as the pope directed the Carmelite nuns to move a convent away from Auschwitz.
The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.
My personality, when tasked with creating meals, goes something like this: Is there a way we can make this more difficult? Because let’s do that. I don’t mean to complicate things. It’s just – why buy pre-packaged potato salad when you can spend your morning boiling potatoes and flipping out because there’s no dill in the house?
For me it’s also – the music is equally as important. I mean I think as somebody who writes music, there just has to sort of be the marriage between both.
Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.
I’ve had weight issues all my life. I’ve been on all the diets: Atkins, liquid protein, Scarsdale diet. Now I go to the gym often. I’m always on the StairMaster, and I do weights.
Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.
The world is my country, science is my religion.
Every animal leaves traces of what it was man alone leaves traces of what he created.
Adolescence isn’t just about prom or wearing sparkly dresses.
I did 13-something years of talking to wrestlers and promoters about why they did certain things and why they booked matches a certain way and what they were thinking and whether they were satisfied with the draw. And I got a lot of insight in the business.
Since we launched the original ‘Pop Idol’ in England, I’ve remained close with Simon Fuller. Working as executive producer on ‘American idol’ for its first seven years not only was an inspirational journey into the heart of American pop culture, it opened my eyes to the untapped potential of the incredibly dynamic young people in this world.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Like me, the great majority of Americans wish both to preserve the traditional definition of marriage and to oppose bias and intolerance directed towards gays and lesbians.
The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
Things are beautiful if you love them.
To the first class belong the Gospels and Acts to the second, the Epistles to the third, the Revelation.
The sports page records people’s accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man’s failures.