I don't really believe in elegance. Ever since I first came to France many years ago to do the Chambre Syndicale course, I always felt I was somehow lacking, first of all being British - obviously a disaster! But I was also puzzled with this idea that you have to tie your Hermes scarf just right, or you can only wear black.
No matter what is happening in life or in the world - war, natural disaster, poor health, pain, the death of loved ones - if existence is filled with art, music and literature, life will be fulfilling, a joy.
You can't have people making decisions about the future of the world who are scientifically illiterate. That's a recipe for disaster. And I don't mean just whether a politician is scientifically literate, but people who vote politicians into office.
The day that the balance between the two sections of the country - the slaveholding States and the non-slaveholding States - is destroyed is a day that will not be far removed from political revolution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread disaster.
You don't have to look any farther than the state of California to know that having a 'Gordian knot' of conflicting measures acting upon on your state budget is a recipe for disaster.
We live in a world of constant juxtaposition between joy that's possible and pain that's all too common. We hope for love and success and abundance, but we never quite forget that there is always lurking the possibility of disaster.
My father and his eight siblings grew up in the kind of poverty that Americans don't like to talk about unless a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina strikes, and then the conversation only lasts as long as the news cycle. His family squatted in shacks. The children scavenged for food.
The defeat of the Augustan policy, as the peace with Maroboduus and the sufferance of the Teutoburg disaster may well be termed, was hardly a victory of the Germans.
What is lacking in India are decent social services. The health service is a disaster. Education is a disaster.
We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government. Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off.
My father did a lot of disaster relief work, and he was always in places where there was a lot of pain.
There is no 'need' for us to eat meat, dairy or eggs. Indeed, these foods are increasingly linked to various human diseases and animal agriculture is an environmental disaster for the planet.
Our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is there for a natural disaster or some other catastrophe.
I'm a bit of a pessimist, oh yeah, and I always think the film I'm about to make is going to be a disaster.
I try to be an ethical, moral person and a nice person, and I like to have that reflected in my comedy. I'm not a mean comedian, and I don't think that my comedy is mean. I think that for the most part, it's more focused on the diversity that we all handle and try to provide a distraction from the disaster of modern living.
Theatre is a series of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.
A war with Pakistan would be an utter disaster.
Writing with a film in mind - writing like a screenplay - is a sureshot recipe for disaster.
'Scary Movie' has lost its way as a franchise. It has turned into 'Disaster Film' and 'Epic Movie' and 'Date Movie' and that isn't what I wanted. I wanted to do a movie that was just grounded in a reality that went to crazy places.
There is humor in the specter of the worst disaster in our nation's history. All I have to do is sweep away the debris of shock to find it.
Politically speaking, it's always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future.
Unfettered free trade has led to a disaster.
I've never been that guy who says, 'Ooh, I have to play King Lear'. First off, that'd be a disaster anyway. I tend to read something and see who's involved, and then know I want to be part of it. But I don't think I'm through with comedy. I still love to make people laugh.
All company bosses want a policy on corporate social responsibility. The positive effect is hard to quantify, but the negative consequences of a disaster are enormous.
The two biggest threats to international security in 2013 are Iran getting a nuclear weapon, and Iran being bombed to stop it getting a nuclear weapon. Both would precipitate a long and dangerous conflict in an already unstable Middle East. Both would be a disaster.
I'm in a complete state of panic before I begin something because I'm sure that it's going to be a complete disaster. I'm going to do a worse job than anybody could ever imagine anybody doing on the planet Earth.
A default on our debts as a result of not meeting our obligations would be a disaster for the stock market, and Americans would see their retirement funds shrivel up.
During my life, I have had a few nightmares which happened to me while I was wide awake. One of them was the National Republican Convention in San Francisco, which produced the greatest disaster the Republican Party has ever known - Nominee Barry Goldwater.
Life constantly presents the greatest opportunity brilliantly disguised as the biggest disaster.
The Keystone pipeline is one of those things that's sort of a political driver. And mostly, the Republicans use it to sort of embarrass the president and embarrass quite a few Democrats who feel that there's a potential for an environmental disaster.
Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature.
My friends have named me the person they least want to do extreme adventures with, because I always seem to be very close to being part of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I think I've used a few.
The Bible is a novel that's crazy... it has murder, it has victory it has mayhem, it has disaster, it has war, sanctification.
If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don't care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.
One thing you learn doing magic tricks for a living is how close every performance of every magic trick is to disaster. There are no robust magic tricks. They're all hanging from a thread - sometimes literally.
I was on a path that could've really led to disaster, and the one thing for me that really kept me focused and gave me something to believe in and a sense of self-worth and a discipline was music.