I got into lobbying kind of against my will at first. I frankly didn't want to be a lobbyist, but I realized that in lobbying I could do things politically that were interesting to me and do some what I thought would be good. I'm not sure it all turned out like that, but at least that was some of the initial thinking.
As Asian-Americans, the charge that is often lobbed against us is sort of the least original: the idea that somehow we're perpetual foreigners, that we can't be trusted, and that even my father, who was patriotic to the point that it was kind of a joke among his children, would be accused of being disloyal to America.
You don't play against opponents, you play against the game of basketball.
One of the big mistakes Republicans made with the Contract with America is that they tried to do too much too fast, and people revolted against it.
I feel that man-hating is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.
By the time you're 18, 19, you know yourself, and you shouldn't go against your gut feeling, which is a temptation in the first year of university.
The people who were against the Vietnam War thought I was attacking the Army. The guys in the Army thought I was representing their experiences. I was on both sides, and I survived.
Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn't it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later?
When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.
My fire is my gift and my curse. I harness it 95% of the time, but the 5% I don't, it works against me.
Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.
When someone doesn't react to changes, the changes turn against him.
I shall lend credit to nothing against my people which parents would not believe against their own children.
Fidel Castro represents the dignity of the South American continent against empires. He's a living legend: an icon of independence and freedom across the continent.
In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear.
I'll see Naomi Wolf on television periodically, I have nothing against her and what she says, but I'll feel that she's a politician, like she's got an agenda to get across and that she doesn't always say what's really true or exactly what she feels.
In the '90s, there was always this continuous pitting of women against each other in the media, trying to make them battle it out.
I do hear about these actors who go on vacations to Bali for three months, and their agents are banging their heads against a wall trying to find their clients - but that's not me. I'm working hard every day. Enjoy your vacation.
We all want to win against all odds. We all want to be loved. We all wish it was possible to change our world and to make our world a better place.
A poet or prose narrator usually looks back on what he has achieved against a backdrop of the years that have passed, generally finding that some of these achievements are acceptable, while others are less so.
If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
'Precious' is so not P.C. What I learned from doing the film is that even though I am black, I'm prejudiced. I'm prejudiced against people who are darker than me.
Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people.
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
I never ever, ever say anything against my husband to anyone except my husband. Everyone gets in fights, and I think the natural propensity for women is, 'Oh I want to talk to someone.' But the minute you take what bothers you outside the bond between you and your husband, you let someone else into the relationship and that causes a wedge.
I was very against pink and purple when I was young, because they were girls' colors. But that was only because I didn't want people to write me off for what I can do. When I got into my 20s, I decided that was stupid.
I have nothing against these big CGI movies, but there are not enough of the other ones - the ones with stories about character that have a beginning, a middle and an end. I said that to a couple of studio heads and they said, 'That's novel.'
Switzerland is part of the fight against terrorism. There is no neutrality against this threat.
The sight of a drunkard is a better sermon against that vice than the best that was ever preached on that subject.
Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.
As a life-long liberal who has engaged in protests against the government and for civil rights, I am saddened at efforts by some of my fellow liberals to silence commencement speakers with whom they might disagree on some issues.
Famous people feel that they must perpetually be on the crest of the wave, not realising that it is against all the rules of life. You can't be on top all the time, it isn't natural.
After two undefeated seasons of 'Worst Cooks in America,' I'm ready for a third. Going against Bobby Flay takes the challenge to another level, but I'm ready to whip these contestants into shape and the winner is sure to be from Team Burrell.
Violating the 4th Amendment guarantees against illegal searches and seizures is not the way to solve crime problems.
But since day one, we've always been kinda up against it. So at the end, it's not surprising that we were kind of led along for so many months and didn't know what the fate of the show was gonna be. It was... in a weird way, just kind of that was the way it's always been.
But it is important to observe that when Europe or the United Nations impose sanctions that are supposed to be aimed against a certain regime, usually generally millions of people end up being directly punished.
