Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of our resources - and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance on in the future.
Although the odds are you're not gonna get the acting job you go out for, it's easier to successfully audition than it is to sit down for a few months and write a movie that's going to actually sell.
The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It's a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I'm writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I'm actually there and doing the writing.
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
There's nothing I dislike more than being in a photo shoot where they say, 'Be yourself.' That's not why I became an actress. That's what I find so funny: that you become an actor, and all of a sudden, everyone wants to know about you. But I didn't become an actor so I could show you me.
Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.
Oddly enough, Asians are a much smaller 'minority' than African Americans in this country. But because Asians are so successful, college admission officers don't feel sorry for them, so they are not a preferred 'minority.'
To be an effective leader and make sound decisions, you must be able to gather data by seeking out diverse perspectives and be willing to consider points of view other than your own.
There are a lot more TV sets in use on Monday night than on Sunday afternoon.
Greater love hath no man than to attend the Episcopal Church with his wife.
People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.
As long as Elton John can bring forth one performance per album on the order of 'Someone Saved My Life Tonight,' the chance remains that he will become something more than the great entertainer he already is and go on to make a lasting contribution to rock.
It's not an exaggeration to say that Texas gets a lot more out of being part of the United States than the United States gets out of having Texas as one of the states.
The only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that. The only theism that is no less profound than the Buddha's atheism is that represented in the Bible by Job and Jeremiah.
I suspect that authors who start their careers writing for an adult audience - and who eventually produce a young adult novel or two - are more common than authors who begin by writing for young adults and who then gravitate toward composing something for an adult audience.
We knew all along we were making a good show, so its success was not a surprise to me. What has surprised me is the magnitude of this show's success. More people see me now in one episode than saw me in 20 years of movies and theater!
More people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, my friends, that is true perversion.
The possibilities in sci-fi are wonderful. The subject is bigger than everything we know.
I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
I should have been trying to build a career, rather than leaving it in the hands of somebody else.
I understand men much better than most women I know.
In the range of music that we play - roughly 300 years' worth-there really are more similarities than differences.
My brother and sister are both older than I am and were born before my father went off to World War I.
I therefore shared fully the intense chagrin of the New York and other State delegations when, on the third ballot, Abraham Lincoln received a larger vote than Seward.
Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland.
A year from now, you're gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
I certainly miss playing piano, and I really wish I did it more - it's really a very therapeutic thing to do for me. I just need to be home for more than a few minutes to be able to play more, I guess.
The four walls of paper are like a prison because every idea wants to spring out in all directions - everything is connected with everything else, sometimes more than others.
I have never sung a whole song on my own before and I am not the best dancer in the world, but I would rather try and fall than not not try at all.
In a lot of Indian societies, spirituality has been lost, I think it's still the best way of looking at the world for Indians - better than any organized religion in this country.
Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?
That's what makes the Ryder Cup in golf so much better than the Masters or the U.S. Open. To be a part of something that is not about personal achievement, but about representing everyone and sharing it with the whole country, it's wonderful.
I think the world is much better off without Saddam Hussein than with him.
We may believe in the state's responsibility to alleviate the crushing poverty that afflicts 40 percent of Latin America's population, but most of us also affirm that there is no better cure for that poverty than a stronger, more globally integrated economy.
I am not going to make any commitments to the teachers union to do anything until they do something that's other than in their own self- interest. And everything they have done so far is in their self-interests, and that's it.
