The gradual decline of a society is often a self-induced process of trying to meet ever-expanding appetites, rather than a physical inability to produce past levels of food and fuel, or to maintain adequate defense.
It is better to lose everything you have to keep the balance of justice level, than to live a life of petty privilege devoid of true freedom.
At one level you're condemned to the voice you have. But within those confines, you have a certain amount of freedom to range among your possible voices.
A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels.
When you become successful on the level that Fleetwood Mac did, it gives you financial freedom, which should allow you to follow your impulses. But oddly enough, they become much harder to follow.
You can control what you put in your body - 100 percent. You really can control your level of fitness and how your body looks.
I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.
I would argue that television and particularly the BBC were instrumental in puffing up the Royal Family to a level where they were inflated out of all, all proportion to their relevance on the national scene.
Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.
At this level, the individual perceives the maintenance of the expectations of his family, group, or nation as valuable in its own right, regardless of immediate and obvious consequences.
I think it's fascinating that I receive attention for what people perceive to be a level of manliness or machismo, when amongst my family of farmers and paramedics and regular Americans, I'm kind of the sissy in my family.
There are peaks and valleys in anything and that is especially true for the music business. It is very inconsistent. But if you are wise, you can let those downs really bring you to another level of your personality.
Such being the nature of mental life, the business of psychology is primarily to describe in detail the various forms which attention or conation assumes upon the different levels of that life.
I just wanted to be in show business. I didn't care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy.
You never know how things are going to go. I think you hope that people are going to dig what you do and that you're going to get the chance to do it on a really comfortable level.
But as far as being an American and loving this country and getting a chance to travel across it every day and meeting people on the road and folks in the military, I love this country on so many different levels.
Despite the situation in Cuba, I had a chance to play on the national team; and compared to other baseball players and other people in Cuba, I had the opportunity to live at a level that was not very high class but in the middle.
There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment - and you start to decline.
Mediums change you by their very existence. They do this on fundamental levels because they force you to favour certain parts of your brain over others.
All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.
Of course, if this season turns out to be terrible for me - if I get injured again and this prevents me from reaching a satisfying level, then I could change my decision again. But at this moment, it absolutely feels like the right thing for me to co...
