How Quotes

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

How did we win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don't police the world. That's conservative, it's Republican, it's pro-American - it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution.

Vanity is something that will only get in the way of doing your best work, and ultimately if you're truly vain you care more about your work than how you look in your work. I actually consider myself a pretty vain guy when it comes to that.

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

We had a $10 billion budget deficit when we got here in January of 2003. We cut that budget deficit; we did not raise taxes; we came back in '05, and we had an $8 billion surplus. That's how fast it can happen.

I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.

The very fact that we are having a national conversation about what we should eat, that we are struggling with the question about what the best diet is, is symptomatic of how far we have strayed from the natural conditions that gave rise to our species, from the simple act of eating real, whole, fresh food.

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!

The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?

I love seeing a house and thinking about how it should be redone or restored.

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me.

No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.

How can any man be weak who dares to be at all?

Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before.

I had an idea of what I thought was funny. It's kind of based on how I am.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

God lets you be successful because he trusts you that you will do the right thing with it. Now, does he get disappointed often? All the time, because people get there and they forget how they got it.

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there's a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they're not the same, ever again.

It doesn't matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I'm a woman or a man.

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, 'Look how far we've come,' because we hadn't come very far, to say the least. Although Jackson's population was half white and half black, I didn't have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

I'm competitive with myself, and that goes hand in hand with how I present myself. I'm not only trying to put one foot in front of the other, I'm trying to put my best foot forward.

I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?

I heard endless conversations between my parents when I was going to sleep about how we would survive, how we would continue. All of them were about trying to make me better.