Quotes on Needs

One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we'll need a new definition.

The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.

Americans need to educate themselves, from elementary school onward, about what their country has done abroad. And they need to play a more active role in ensuring that what the United States does abroad is not merely in keeping with a foreign policy elite's sense of realpolitik but also with the American public's own sense of American values.

The real scientist is ready to bear privation and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take.

Any active sportsman has to be very focused; you've got to be in the right frame of mind. If your energy is diverted in various directions, you do not achieve the results. I need to know when to switch on and switch off: and the rest of the things happen around that. Cricket is in the foreground, the rest is in the background.

People need to be edited; life needs to be edited. I need to be edited.

We can't really digest food unless there's hunger. So we can't really assimilate spiritual wisdom unless we feel the need for it.

I don't need to write comics for a living. I have movies and TV for that. I write comics for one reason and one reason only: I love comics. I love the form, the structure, the storytelling process, I love everything about it.

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.

I don't need to manufacture trauma in my life to be creative. I have a big enough reservoir of sadness or emotional trauma to last me.

Fathering is a major job, but I need both things in my life: my job to be a director, and my kids to direct me.

Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America.

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.

I guess my religious faith sustained me more than anything else. Family is also very important. If I didn't have children, it would have been too difficult. Even if you are strong, you still need people who would support you all the way.

How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things.

The biggest misconception about work is that you need to spend the majority of your time doing it.

Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize.

Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.

Life doesn't make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.