I'm an optimist. I hope if a movie's good that it will be a success, but as we know, that's not always true, just because of popular taste, advertising, distribution patterns - there's lots of reasons.
Once you realize just the sort of glut of books that exists out there, it does become incumbent on you not to add to it unless you have a damn good reason.
I believe that government should confine itself to the public realm and that it should be as stripped down as possible, within reason. It should not be burdened by excess bureaucracy.
A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away.
The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.
We all look to have transcendent experiences that lift us out of the everyday, and fear is a good one. But, I think it's the same reason why people want to laugh their heads off.
I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.
Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity. The conclusion is based on conservative moral convictions t...
Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we've always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.
I was definitely not the kid that just wanted to be famous for no reason whatsoever and then happened to find comedy. Fame and all that stuff have always been slightly terrifying to me, and it makes me very anxious.
That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
Faith can make no appeal to reason or the fitness of things; its appeal is to the Word of God, and whatever is therein revealed, faith accepts as true.
Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page.
Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
Protestantism came to America to make America Protestant. It was assumed that was to be done through faith in the reasonableness of the common man and the establishment of a democratic republic.
We need to look to the future. You can't come up with new things unless you constantly forget the past. There's no reason to keep wearing the same pair of pants.
The Olympic stadium may have been built only in the early 1970s but it was clear for a long time it had no future. For many reasons it is not good enough for modern football and today's fans.
For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.
