Quotes on Us

I believe that the only way to truly be fulfilled, the only way to truly be the person that God created us to be, is to live in our passion, is to do what we're passionate about. It changes everything about us.

The terrorists didn't think that Yazidi girls would have the courage to tell the world every detail of what they did to us. We defy them by not letting their crimes go unanswered.

We must not allow the horrific actions of madmen to cut us off from our humanity.

Defeating racism, tribalism, intolerance and all forms of discrimination will liberate us all, victim and perpetrator alike.

Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story; we do not know where we are in the story. We do not know who, ultimately, is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end.

Local images have one kind of reality. 'U.S. 1' will, I hope, have that kind and another, too. Poetry can extend the document.

Pakistan's political instability is its greatest vulnerability, and a decline in U.S. power would reduce America's ability to aid Pakistan's consolidation and development.

One of the things that's beautiful about New Orleans is how culturally rich we are and how well we have worked together. People call us a gumbo. It's really important that we get focused on the very simple notion that diversity is a strength, it's not a weakness.

We all remember the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. What is less well known is that BP is claiming a 9.9 billion tax deduction on the money they had to spend cleaning up their own mess and paying for damages they caused. That is absurd.

Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife.

All of us can agree that we want government to work as well as possible, and we should all applaud efforts to improve it. But there is no escaping the divisive and essential questions: What is the purpose of the state, and whom does it serve?

When we talk to somebody and we want to be nice or polite or show our more beautiful side, we try to use the best words that we know. This is what poets are doing. They are cleaning the words, they are inventing the sentiments, they are giving us a way to communicate.

Addressing the weaknesses of capitalism will require us, above all, to do two things: first, to take a long-term perspective, and second, to re-set the priorities of business.

Egocentrism appears to us as a form of behavior intermediate between purely individual and socialized behavior.

You try to pull away the experiences until you get to the core of humanity, and you find that light that exists in everybody. It's that light that I'm searching for in all of my work - is that connective thing, that ether that enters all of us - you know what I mean? That's a part of God.

The fact that the great scientist believed in flying machines was the one thing that encouraged us to begin our studies.

There is indeed the possibility that the evolutionary process has, in gray antiquity, bred into us an excess of aggression.

I was very lucky to have a father who read to us when we were children. And he didn't just read books - he brought them alive. We couldn't wait for the next chapter. So my love of reading started early and has stayed with me all my life.

The 'find it, fix it 'model of medicine doesn't work any more. The U.S. healthcare system is bankrupting the country, bankrolling the insurance companies and exhausting healthcare staff. And despite all that, we are ranked 50th in the world for life expectancy.

Twenty years ago, I wrote a book called 'It Takes a Village.' And a lot of people looked at the title and asked, 'What the heck do you mean by that?' This is what I mean. None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone.

Our swords shall play the orators for us.