Sometimes you can’t prevent things from happening, and once they’re done, you can’t change the past. There is a way to deal with the pain, though, because you always control your response. You cry, if you need to. You hurt for a while. But then...
Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring--not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: s...
...the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They're actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that's not how they really feel. They just grumble out of habit. If you told them to think for themselves,...
A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about realism?' To which my general response is, 'What about it?' However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of my favorite writers, Marilynne R...
Some of the most challenging work a suicide survivor can do is to pray. To pray fully, survivors must bring all of themselves to the prayer: their anger, disappointment, fears, insecurities, and why's. I bring all of me into an encounter with God, aw...
You see, I have in my teaching - I always say I've done it for a hundred years and have had thousands of students - I have always spoken against just falling onto your knees for so-called accidents, I mean a result you are not responsible for.
When I played the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, I got to bring Wiley, my 85-pound black lab. He's responsible for my favorite New Year's memory of all: At the end of the show, he ran onstage and then out across all the tables in the sh...
I am mindful that scientific achievement is rooted in the past, is cultivated to full stature by many contemporaries and flourishes only in favorable environment. No individual is alone responsible for a single stepping stone along the path of progre...
When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant ...
The older you get the more you realize that just because someone has an important job doesn't necessarily mean that they do it responsibly, or are even good at it. There are many 'D' students running around with high social status gained from their s...
We may not find the answers. We may not find Bigfoot. We may not find a chupacabra. We may not find out who was responsible for killing JFK, but we're going to keep looking, asking, probing. And one day - you know what? - we may get some of those ans...
Don't go overboard in praising required behavior: 'We have only done our duty' (Luke 17:10). But do go overboard when your child confesses the truth, repents honestly, takes chances, and loves openly. Praise the developing character in your child as ...
It's just that it's impossible to be a broken or whole person. You can only be a person. You can only exist, you can only belong to yourself, and you can only be responsible for your own happiness or belonging or whatever. That broken-part-piece-whol...
Governmental intervention and personal responsibility are not mutually exclusive issues, but they do frame a 'do it ourselves' vs. 'what are you doing for us' debate. For the black community, that's a debate that's been raging at least as far back as...
The whole punk scene is, of course, responsible for the Go-Go's ever getting created. Because before punk rock happened, you couldn't start a band if you didn't know how to play an instrument. But when punk happened it was like, 'Oh, it doesn't matte...
The library knows that it is a temporary fix. We have a stamp for the inside front cover: BROKEN SPINE NOTED. It is like a bracelet worn by a diabetic. When you return the book with this message stamped inside, we know you're not the one responsible ...
To be free to roam our own consciousness and be responsible for ourselves, a letting go process is required. We have to let go of how others define us; what damaging messages remain from childhood; how others define our relationship with the creator;...
There is nothing like the moment you connect with a reader! Nothing like the response that you get when what you have written touches someone in some way. It's a moment in which your work is almost a co-creation, you and the reader joining forces to ...
I think a great entrepreneur is learning every day. An entrepreneur is somebody that doesn’t take no for an answer — they’re going to figure something out. They also take responsibility. They don’t blame anybody else. And they’re dreamers i...
It strikes me as a sound, honest statement for a prospective voter to say: 'Look, I haven't given this election a minute's thought, and it's just not fair for me to cancel out the vote of someone who actually gives a damn.' Indeed, it's not just soun...
A child whose life is full of the threat and fear of punishment is locked into babyhood. There is no way for him to grow up, to learn to take responsibility for his life and acts. Most important of all, we should not assume that having to yield to th...
