Science is an integral part of culture. It's not this foreign thing, done by an arcane priesthood. It's one of the glories of the human intellectual tradition.
I don't think academic writing ever was wonderful. However, science used to be much less specialized.
Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors.
I find it greatly disturbing that the Bush administration has used political and religious ideologies to influence national policy on science and medicine.
To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirit may rise.
I think ultimately I make people happy: Whether I'm doing the stage show, giving somebody a makeover, or designing clothing, the end goal is to make people smile.
You have to tell guys to ask you on a date. Smile when you do it - however that works, I'm not 'Cosmo.' But yeah - not a lot of people know how to 'court' anymore, sorry.
While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun.
My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tajiki. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye.
I played all kinds of sports when I was young: tennis, handball, basketball, some soccer. I focused on basketball when I was 16 or 17 and then came to the U.S. when I was 20.
I think the strength of the Catholic church is that when it does finally identify a problem, it works to resolve it.
In world mythology, there are countless examples of tragic characters whose greatest strength is also the source of their undoing. But the ancient Greeks and Romans also held the view that acceptance is the beginning of wisdom.
If you look at Charles Dickens's time, there were so many different levels of society and everybody understood their place in it, it was that complex and simple. I'm not sure we have that now.
I think you can get to a point where nihilism, if that's the right word, is overwhelming, and the basic laws that society has set up - either religious or social laws - become meaningless.
I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.
And it is this sense that some of us have to contribute to the culture, to the society in ways that may hurt financially, so what? We do it because we are born to do it, we feel we have no other choice and so be it.
Technology determines the possibilities of society. It doesn't matter whether you start out from a fascist state or a communist state or a free-market state.
Offers for me to play dances, society parties, even churches, were now coming in regularly. For most dates I was paid the sum of one dollar per hour, and they always tipped me at the end of the night.
Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.
When I looked at the addictive qualities of video games and how they captivate people's attention, I decided to try the same technology for enhancing well-being.
