Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.
I think my generation has had an unbelievably easy time profiting from the world that was made for us by our parents and grandparents. We are essentially a rather frivolous generation. The Blair government was my generation's shot at power. It had some good things, but it had some flaws.
Screaming, it's not me. I tried it before! Action is more my thing. Not talking. It's hard for me to have word fights, fighting with words. I'd rather just listen.
We now have to see our country surrender to the enemy without demonstrating our power up to 120 percent. We are now on a course for a humiliating peace - or, rather, a humiliating surrender.
Look at the structure of the Gates Foundation and this idea that, rather than trying to solve these huge global problems through institutions with some kind of democracy and transparency baked into them, we're just going to outsource it to benevolent billionaires.
I have nothing against investment banking, but it's like massaging money rather than creating money. If you're in physics, you create inventions, you create lasers, you create transistors, computers, GPS.
Due to the political nature of film, partisan film making, especially where the subject is close to the film makers hart, tend to be the norm, rather than the exception.
I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.
I suppose illustration tends to live in the streets, rather than in the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the museum, and consequently it has come to be taken less seriously.
In my view, a philanthropist is anyone who gives anything - time, money, experience, skills or networks - in any amount, to create a better world. This is not how we once thought about philanthropy. The word used to conjure up something rather passive - sitting down and writing checks.
It's not like I wake up every morning and just can't wait to write. It is my job. It's much easier to not write. I'd rather read. This is my income. This is what supports my family. Having a child is a pretty big incentive to keep working.
For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.
At TechStars, I have the privilege of working with hundreds of the best and brightest start-up mentors on the planet. We coach our mentors to take a Socratic approach and to provide data rather than decisions.
There isn't an amount of money you could offer me to do reality TV. I would rather get my job back on the building site. Or I could own a construction business. Maybe I could retire to my house in Long Island and take up painting, like Captain Beefheart. A crazy recluse: I like that idea.
I'd much rather be in a movie that people have really strong feelings about than one that makes a hundred million dollars but you can't remember because it's just like all the others.
I turn to poems to find spaces that might enlarge, rather than distill, experience.
I think what is happening is I think first of all there is confidence in the U.K. economy. We're in a German rather than a Greek position in international financial markets, which is very positive and keeps our debt service costs down, and we're also beginning to see real evidence of rebalancing.
Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.
An artist is someone who should raise questions rather than give answers. I have no message.
In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.
Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does. Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time - our 'social graphs' - into money for others.
By bringing about a rational drug policy, we'd be freeing up a lot of resources for real crime. Drug disputes would get played out with courts rather than with guns. So it would make this country a much better place overnight.
You're much better off creating positive rewards, complimenting people for acting correctly, rather than punishing them when they act incorrectly.
When I left high school - I was younger than my classmates, just 17 - I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I thought, 'When I go to college, I'd rather study something else.'
Once in a while, I still witness occasionally sexist behavior and comments from men (which experience has taught me you should always deflect with humour rather than anger). Old habits die hard, after all, and it's unrealistic to expect dinosaurs to fall silent overnight.
I'm always curious about what happens when we die. And I'd like to think that somehow the spirit goes on. I'd rather not think that it's just about this.
Someone with 4As at A-level from Eton may look good on paper and come across as very smooth, but push a bit more, and often you get the impression they have learned to pass exams rather than think for themselves.
We need to allow people to bypass government... to look to themselves for solving problems rather than asking the government to do things for them.
Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
In some ways, it's better that Obama got elected than McCain. I'd rather be stabbed in the chest with an Obama steak knife than to have been slowly bled to death with McCain paper cuts. Say what you will, but Obama has brought about a patriotic and civic renaissance, the likes of which I have never seen.
I actually cannot stand a room without a view - I would rather have a bedroom the size of a closet with a view over a suite without one.
Writing laws based on an abstract theory, rather than reality, is a dangerous undertaking.
It's nice to be in a situation where the two books that I write for a sort of regular monthly income are also works that I enjoy immensely, rather than them being some kind of bread and butter, do it because you have to do it.
I admire any woman who does stand-up, but frankly I'd rather pull out my own eyelids.
I am a sworn atheist and therefore from my point of view the Talmud or the Koran don't constitute works of political philosophy but rather writings that stand in utter contradiction to concepts like logic, freedom, feminism, secularism, brotherhood - which are my ideals.
