The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.
I think when 'The Simpsons' first came on, there was an uproar. People got used to it. They realized the show's really funny, it's got a heart, so I think it's pretty safe.
I mean, I'm married first of all to one of, if not the most wonderful women in the world. She is everything - funny, attractive, hard-working, she has integrity, she loves me to bits.
There's a long history of anthropomorphic animals in Japanese literature. The so-called 'funny animal scrolls' were the first narratives in Japanese history, and the heroes of many folk tales have animals as their companions.
One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a pair of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often before any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining engine.
The righteousness of Jesus Christ is one of those great mysteries, which the angels desire to look into, and seems to be one of the first lessons that God taught men after the fall.
While I am the one who made the choice to enter the ministry, there was a choice before that one, the choice God made in calling me to be his in the first place.
I was looking at the setlist backstage and I just said, 'Oh my God, the first six songs nobody's gonna know.' But they all knew the lyrics. It just blew me away.
It is becoming clear that the old platitudes can no longer be maintained, and that if we wish to improve our morals we must first improve our knowledge.
In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowled...
Whatever people thought the first time they held a portable phone the size of a shoe in their hands, it was nothing like where we are now, accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips.
I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad?
We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster - closed and forgotten within the first year.
Washington doesn't have just a spending problem, or just an entitlement problem, or just a taxing problem. We have a leadership problem. Fix that, and the first three problems are solved.
Beginning under the Roman Empire, intellectual leadership in the West had been provided by Christianity. In the middle ages, who invented the first universities - in Paris, Oxford, Cambridge? The church.
Actions, such as the designation of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, spring from First Lady Michelle Obama's leadership of efforts to end childhood obesity within this generation.
I'm a huge freak, and always have been. I spent the first part of my life trying really desperately not to be one, and it was just a waste of time.
All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.
When life takes me on a new journey, I simply remember the smile my first ballet recital put on my face and I move forward.
The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.
Similarly, anyone who wishes to understand the mind of the sacred writers must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by copying their deeds.
