For sure, the 'Obamania' that's fast taking hold reflects an incredible thirst for change in global politics and, dare I say, a wave of optimism that things can be different.
It was said that Chile was not ready to vote for a woman, it was traditionally a sexist country. In the end, the reverse happened: the fact of being a woman became a symbol of the process of cultural change the country was undergoing.
I've learned that for many people, change is uncomfortable. Maybe they want to go through it, and they can see the benefit of it, but at a gut level, change is uncomfortable.
If a huge number of people call for change, the government will have to react. If you want to avoid uprisings, or demonstrations, you need to respond to the people's desperate need for change.
If current technological processes continue without change, the environment will change, and we, the human species, will either have to mutate or even die, to disappear, as many species have disappeared.
It's a pity that the tennis is really going down the drain. Every year it's getting worse and worse and worse. There has to be a radical change, and I hope it will be really soon.
There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.
It's been my experience that the longer I do yoga, the more I want to know, the more I am able to understand and the less judgmental I am.
I had no real experience studying acting; I came to it having done other things for a living for many, many years, and I have this gigantic respect for experience and technique.
From this experience we have learned that in a big party it is important to have the necessary and often controversial discussions on policy issues such as the health system while in opposition.
A foreign ideology cannot be introduced into Chechnya - were it through an Arab or al-Qaeda. Our experience is rich and long enough for us to be Muslims and know what jihad is.
The emphasis of my government is to take advantage from the Chinese experience in the fields of agriculture, fisheries, energy, infrastructure, development, health and high efficiency irrigation.
My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.
Any observations from the Moon or a sense of realising this or that about the greater meaning of things wasn't as influential for me as the experience of coming back and dealing with being a person who's been to the Moon.
Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.
Sometimes you recognize that there is a category of human experience that has not been identified but everyone knows about it. That is when I find a term to describe it.
I have close family members as well as lots of close friends who are gay. Many of them strongly support gay marriage.
I don't think a female running a house is a problem, a broken family. It's perceived as one because of the notion that a head is a man.
I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.
I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.
There are many reasons why Mitt Romney should not become president, but perhaps the most important of all is the narrowness of his experience, perspective and vision.
