I did not want 'Battleship' to be perceived as an American war film. I wanted to do everything I could to make the film accessible to a global audience. It felt like bringing an alien component to the film would help take the American jingoism out of...
American schools in Guam, both before 1941 and after 1945, were established to eradicate the Chamoru, tongue and person. To educate the old Chamoru out of the new American. The native out of the patriot...But the nastier lesson their schools taught w...
I'd like to see North America become a dry, sunny, sandy region inhabited mainly by lizards, buzzards and a modest human population - about 25 million would be plenty - of pastoralists and prospectors (prospecting for truth), gathering once a year in...
Religious laws, in all the major religious traditions, have both a letter and a spirit. As I understand the words and example of Jesus, the spirit of the law is all-important whereas the letter, while useful… becomes lifeless and deadly without it....
It may be underfunded and at times mismanaged, but the [Endangered Species] Act is an unprecedented attempt to delegate human-caused extinction to the chapters of history we would rather not revisit: the Slave Trade, the Indian Removal Policy, the su...
Let me speak plainly: The United States of America is and must remain a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. Our very unity has been strengthened by this pluralism. That's how we began; this is how we must always be. The ideals of our country...
If I didn't fear I'd do you harm...I'd try to make you an atheist. I really do think that you are a deluded follower of mistaken and superstitious and cowardly theories. That's as far as I'll go....Everyone who worships a god worships a force back of...
I love America, and I love to say that my family is American.
For our sins God has created three enemies for us: mice in the house, the fox in the mountains, and a priest in our village.
If the incision of our words amounts to nothing but a feeling, a slow motion, it will still cut a better swath than the factory model, the corporate model, the penitentiary model, which by my lights are one and the same.
We’re better together than we are apart. The American Dream has us looking out for ourselves even at the expense of our neighbors. That shit ain’t true, man.
Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, ...
The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically connected Thomas) were merchants who sought salvation through commerce.
If you have a deep inclination to transmute harm into help and be of benefit to others, whether they live next door or on the other side of the world, you will eventually be connected with the sources of energy and information that will assist your e...
If a novelist were so uncouth and possessed of so little moral sense that he should write of illicit love, his book would be barred from the public libraries and he woukd be ostracized by society.
The thought of going abroad makes my heart Leap," (Charles) Sumner wrote. "I feel, when I commune with myself about it, as when dwelling on the countenance and voice of a lovely girl. I am in love with .
The standard clauses of the American dream only included two weeks of vacation a year.
The dangerous temptation of wildlife films is that they can lull us into thinking we can get by without the original models -- that we might not need animals in the flesh.
The modern spirit is a hesitant one. Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants.
Courage doesn't mean being free from fear; it means learning to work through fear and speak even when we are afraid.
My Japanese isn’t much better today, but at least now I appreciate my duality more than when I was a punk kid.
