No one reaches the Oval Office without a great deal of admiration for the institution - and himself - so it's unsurprising that sitting presidents favor the biographies of former presidents.
Michael Vick may enjoy watching dogs fight. Someone else may find that repulsive but see nothing wrong with eating an animal who has had a life as full of pain and suffering as the lives of the fighting dogs. It's strange that we regard the latter as morally different from, and superior to, the former.
Magic Johnson, former basketball player, may run for mayor of L.A. in the next election. Remember the good 'ol days when only qualified people ran for office like actors and professional wrestlers.
Barack Obama is an elegant and literate man with a cosmopolitan sense of the world. He is widely read in philosophy, literature, and history - as befits a former law professor - and he has shown time and again a surprising interest in contemporary fiction.
If I am ever forced to choose between my identity as a Tamilian and an award from the central government, I will choose the former.
I think it's less risky for the Kerry campaign to embrace former President Clinton than it is to reject him.
I met the guys through a friend of a friend, and their former drummer had quit. I wasn't too familiar with the Chili Peppers before that, so I joined at the end of 88' and we finished recording Mother's Milk at the end of 89', next thing I know I'm in Spin with a sock.
You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend.
Those who do not think religious organizations should have an opinion on climate change misunderstand the former and the moral dimension of the latter.
I met David Smith through my former wife, Cornelia, who'd studied with him.
Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones, gut this is only in part true.
Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.
I still owe a duty of loyalty to my clients and former clients, so I cannot specify which clients I did not especially find congenial, but the cause was the same.
If you're closing in on age 62 and intend to apply for a former spouse's Social Security benefit, don't remarry. You have to be single at the time you apply.
We planted bugs, microphones, in premises which interested us in the West. We weren't too successful - I would have said unfortunately in former years, but I don't care anymore now.
As a former small business owner, I recognize both the important role small businesses play in our economy and the broad universe of challenges that small business owners face in trying to make ends meet.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
It's hard to compare. Different times, different players. The administration four years ago did not have 9/11. I could tell you this; this particular administration was better suited to handle that than the former.
I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the injection of working at the Carter Center, and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on environment, and things of that kind.
I know the game wasn't a classic, but the night was about more than that-it was about bringing back the memories and raising money for former heroes who have now fallen on hard times.
Human insulin differs from other mammalian types by having a different C-terminal amino acid on the B chain. The immunological difference between beef insulin and human insulin, which is presumably responsible for the antigenicity of the former in some human beings, is thus limited to very a small portion of the whole molecule.
At the end of my life, is it better to say that I empowered people to make great stuff, or that I died with a net worth of $10 billion? Obviously I'm picking the former, although I would not mind both.
As a lawyer, as a former prosecutor, and as a son and grandson of foreign-service officers who tried to represent American democracy in foreign and dangerous places, the idea that this crowd of crooked fossil-fuel types is able to take over and run our democracy like we are a banana republic - I find that repellent.
Critics might contend that putting former private-sector CEOs in the president's Cabinet places the fox in the henhouse. But it's unlikely such executives would expose themselves to the headaches if they weren't genuinely motivated by the call to service.
I used to live in Chris Rock's former apartment. I've got some junk mail for him if he wants it.
Al Gore, the former vice-president of the United States, lives in a mansion that uses more electricity than the average family's bungalow! David Suzuki rides on a bus that uses more fuel than a Smart car to get across Canada! Oh my God! And this is just the tip of the vanishing iceberg!
We live in a culture that is much happier talking about organic brain disease than about psychic illness because the former suggests that something that is physically wrong in a brain is wholly unrelated to that person's upbringing or experiences in the world, but that is not necessarily true.
Throughout the '50s, tons of unknown locals came through Sun to record their demos. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all made their first recordings at the former Memphis Recording Service.
While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding.
My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.
A number of former Wells Fargo employees have described their work environment characterized by intense pressure to meet aggressive and unrealistic sales goals. In a 2010 letter to shareholders, Mr. Stumpf wrote that Wells Fargo's goal was eight products per customer because eight rhymed with great.
When superpower countries like the United States and the former Soviet Union contemplated moving their conflicts to outer space, there was justifiable fear and dread.
If China's expansion into Africa and Russia's into Latin America and the former Soviet Union are any indication, Silicon Valley's ability to expand globally will be severely limited, if only because Beijing and Moscow have no qualms about blending politics and business.
The mere fact that I'm former head of state and former under-secretary in the U.N. system, it means that I can get in touch with anybody in the world, in theory.
David Beckham is a patriot, and I am sure he will help in any way he can. Beckham needs to be part of any future plans to remould the England set-up. Beckham and players like him need to be integrated into the set-up in the same way that the Germans take on board former players from Beckenbauer to Rummenigge.
My all-time favourite political promise - more a boast than a promise, really - came from former Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau, who said in the lead-up to the 1976 Olympics, 'The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby.'