Unless some other factor is operative, in large, weak and underpopulated states, the luxury of ostentation prevails over that of comfort; but in countries which are more populous than extensive, the luxury of comfort always diminishes ostentation.
Some of the anti-trade sentiment is the result of rising wealth inequality and stagnating real wages.
Some of the storytelling we did in 'Battlestar Galactica,' to graft that onto 'Star Trek,' it would have required changing the entire format of the show and, really, a different taste of the show.
I've always believed that there are funny people everywhere, but they're just not comedians. In fact, some of my best comedic inspirations were not professional entertainers.
I enjoy going out to the plants, the factories where just some sub-element maybe of the orbiter or the space station is built. Those people take such pride in that component, and they build it to perfection, and it's just a pleasure to see that.
Every single day, agents of certain foreign governments are relentlessly and methodically trying to hack into our corporations' computer networks and steal blueprints for next-generation equipment and products from some of America's largest exporters.
It is easy to predict that some of the discoveries of research directed towards Grand Challenges - but only the most unexpected ones, and at the most unexpected times - will be the basis of revolutionary improvements in the way that we exploit the power of our future computing devices.
I think I'm basically the same guy I always was. Maybe I've learned, through experience, to rein in some of the anger and temper they say redheads normally have.
Just understand that there's going to be some ups, there's going to be some downs.
Believe it or not, there are some things that I have written that would be kind of a dream to make. Hopefully, I will get to finance them... There is something that I wrote called 'Demon's Flare' which would kind of be a dream come true.
Let's say we were a peacekeeping force in some small country that most people had never heard of. And we were there to host a peaceful election, and we then found out a bunch of stuff was hacked. We probably would push to have another election to make sure that would be fair.
We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.
Some of George W. Bush's friends say that Bush believes God called him to be president during these times of trial. But God told me that He/She/It had actually chosen Al Gore by making sure that Gore won the popular vote and, God thought, the Electoral College. 'That worked for everyone else,' God said.
The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan's needs and then act together to meet them.
All good children's books, I think, address metaphysical issues in some kind of way.
To be able to take music and do something as profoundly original as what we did with the Allman Brothers, you've got to put some time into it.
Trouble is, some accents lend themselves to comedy.
Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully, for my one or two readers who follow me from book to book!
I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.
I've seen small businesses turn into terrible midsize or big ones because they let their desire to achieve some arbitrary metric get the best of them. Whatever is compromised as a result doesn't matter anymore, as long as the company is growing.
My students know I have a life, they know I've written about my life. They know some detail, probably more than they know about their physics teacher, but I would've told them anyway!
I think that all areas of the budget have to be scrubbed. Clearly the entitlement issues have to be reformed and that's an issue that's going to require I think some strong bipartisan cooperation and leadership.
I love teaching. I love working with kids... maybe some day I'll go back to the classroom. I'm not ready to say it'll never happen.
I've worked on a set before, know something about cameras, and done some editing.
In England, with all due respect, we have some of the plainest actresses in the entire world as our greatest.
Our players know that we try to come in each week and put ourselves in the best position to have a chance to win, and sometimes that means some people playing more than others; sometimes it means using different personnel groupings in different weeks.
I think the Beatles is one band that, if I'm working on a song arrangement or if I have some idea for a song, and there's a little bit of a Beatles quality to it, I never avoid that. I always will steer into it.
I suspect political fiction is at its best precisely when it doesn't preach, but restricts itself to showing the reader a different way of life or thought, and merely makes it clear that this is an end-point or outcome for some kind of political creed.
There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.
Games get a bad press compared with, say, opera - even though they're obviously better, because no opera has ever compelled an audience member to collect a giant mushroom and jump across some clouds.
Pixar is a community in the true sense of the word. We think that lasting relationships matter, and we share some basic beliefs: Talent is rare.
I do feel like I have a direct connection with God for some reason; always have since I was a little kid - I would talk to God, talk to the sky.
My screenwriting credits in my career are probably not dissimilar to some other ones in the sense that a lot of the scripts you write don't get made, and the ones that do get made are certainly - as a writer, they're not your vision.
Some records are going to be bigger than others. You're always going to be compared to your biggest record.
I think I look better in a suit than a loincloth. So that may define some of the parts I play.
People live, work, walk, play, shop, study, and eat with other people. There are few desert dwellers who live alone without depending in some way on people.
