Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. As Hobbs put it, the secret of fulfillment is "to cho...
I first got really interested in Noh in about 1977. There was an independent bookstore in Bloomington, Indiana where I was going to high school. It was a really nice place. There was a New Directions paperback. It was the Pound/Fenollosa book, 'The C...
If you want to get into the creative world, you have to just keep flogging away even when nobody's paying attention. Because then when somebody finally does pay attention, it's certainly a lot more interesting when you have a ton of stuff to show.
I didn't really start building my own stuff until I was 24, 25 or so, and even then, I ran into a lot of resistance from, like, older folks, like my bosses at other companies or people in the industry that were like, 'Oh that's an interesting idea, b...
My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors...
I was always telling myself I could handle a more complex role, I could handle something bigger and more interesting than the work I was doing. But I wasn't demanding that of myself. At a certain point, I realized it was never going to come my way un...
I don't find myself interesting as a person and the details I find boring, quite frankly. You could sum it up in a few words or sentences really: came from nothing. Self-educated. Luck. Energy. Curiosity. Ambition. That's it. Nothing at all can illum...
I don't know that I 'look up' to them, but in our predictably partisan media world, I admire journalists who are genuinely nonpartisan and totally fearless in their work - people who have no interest in being invited to the cocktail party. I don't ag...
Political scientists after World War II hypothesized that even though the voices of individual Americans counted for little, most people belonged to a variety of interest groups and membership organizations - clubs, associations, political parties, u...
I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. A...
Some changes we can control, but we find that many things are inseparably wired into the life we share in local, national, and global communities. For example, the healthy lifestyle you are determined to live and take to be a personal choice of which...
Fear is not at the heart of Christianity nor of our nation. The very essence of Christian faith lies in forgiveness. Christians believe that Jesus died so we may live. He took upon himself our sins so that we may be forgiven and thereby gave us a mod...
Because history became his (Keenan's) genuine passion, he tended to see the world in terms of deep historical forces that, in his mind, formed a nation's character in ways almost beyond the consciousness of the men who momentarily governed it, as if ...
Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longe...
In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwi...
I, too, like yourself was a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our Ecunemic Council; you abdicate reason, as we do, before its deci...
I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For t...
Literate, affluent, self-confident people do not like living under either dictatorship or chaos. As more nations move into modernity and find themselves populated with educated, competent citizens, leaders will find it harder to govern those citizens...
If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the k nowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast...
This may seem labouring the obvious, but in Japan one meets intelligent people who claim that ‘logic’ is something invented in the West to allow Westerners to win discussions. Indeed, the belief is widespread that the Japanese can as happily do w...
We cannot afford to be discouraged from challenging the corporate control of our food system, our genetic commons, our shared resources, or our democracy. The history of social change in our nation shows that the political system can be reformed, eve...
