The possibility of my presidential candidacy emerged spontaneously in public opinion polls. For my part, I noticed people's affection when I was doing work on the ground. I think the important thing is that my candidacy was born from citizens themsel...
We have to use every tool at our disposal and that's why we're trialing a badger cull. We need healthy wildlife living alongside healthy cattle. Only if we work to eradicate the reservoir of TB in our badgers, will we have the strong and prosperous d...
I also care that the public are getting their 12 dollars worth when they go to a movie, and that they're not coming out not wanting to ever see a movie with me in it again. I don't care what people think of me as a person, but I do care what people t...
I fought as an infantry Marine on one of the Vietnam War's harshest battlefields. After leaving the Marine Corps, I studied law and found a fulfilling career as an author and journalist. But again and again, I came back to the personal fulfillment th...
First, his job approval ratings have been trending down for many months, a trend that has accelerated in recent weeks as the war on terrorism has been supplanted in the public's mind by corporate scandals, stock market declines, and a growing sense o...
One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing ...
Soeur Marie Emelie" Soeur Marie Emelie is little and very old: her eyes are onyx, and her cheeks vermilion, her apron wide and kind and cobalt blue. She comforts generations and generations of children, who are "new" at the convent school. When they ...
I started thinking more about music. I thought I'd accepted the fact that, as part of "Being Gretchen," I didn't really like music, but in fact, the truth was slightly different: I thought I didn't like music, but in fact, I didn't approve of my own ...
There are so few people left alive from back then, you may as well be talking to them about the Black Death. Nobody recalls the shite in the 30s and that were fucking horrible. For Christ's sake, nobody wants to remember the shite in the 80s. It's al...
In the wild a plant and its pests are continually coevolving, in a dance of resistance and conquest that can have no ultimate victor. But coevolution ceases in an orchard of grafted trees, since they are genetically identical from generation to gener...
Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of s...
What's the story here, Karl?' Kevin asked. 'Hard as it is to believe, these people are slaves,' Karl explained. 'Slaves?' I asked skeptically. 'Well, you might not call them that but they are virtual slaves. They don't receive any pay. They are dealt...
I mean, I don't know much about the Civil War, but whenever I think of that time—I mean, ever since I've had these fantasies about those generals, those gorgeous young Southern generals with their tawny mustaches and beards, and hair in ringlets, o...
Forgive yourself, for anything and everything. This includes things you did as an adult and way back to things you have done since you were born. You can't change the past, so let it go and move on. You won't really have peace in general until you ma...
It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness; and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, have placed upon the summits of...
What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tel...
[I]n science we have to be particularly cautious about 'why' questions. When we ask, 'Why?' we usually mean 'How?' If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: 'Why is the Earth 93 million miles fr...
There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitud...
Children coming forth today have a greater capacity to deal with the greater variety of information that is coming forward than you did. They deliberately are coming forth into this environment where there is more to contemplate. This generation gap ...
Nothing is generous. New knowledge is a valuable commodity. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we are.
The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward.
