My personal fascination with the power of the crowd has been growing: Exactly what can a 'crowd' accomplish? We know crowds can raise billions of dollars, create Wikipedia, and even design and build small autonomous drones. But how about something la...
My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmo...
I'm sure there were times when I wish I had thought, 'Gosh, that might really embarrass mom and dad,' but our parents didn't raise us to think about them. They're very selfless and they wanted us to have as normal of a college life as possible. So re...
I was a sickly baby, and after two sets of adoptive parents took me home, they returned me to the orphanage because of a serious respiratory infection. But as they say, the third time's a charm, because my mom and dad adopted me and took me into thei...
I come from the state of Michigan. We were the first English-speaking government in the world to outlaw the death penalty, back in the 1840s. We have never had, as a state, the death penalty in Michigan. I was raised with that, and even Republicans i...
Even today we raise our hand against our brother... We have perfected our weapons, our conscience has fallen asleep, and we have sharpened our ideas to justify ourselves as if it were normal we continue to sow destruction, pain, death. Violence and w...
I had done quite a bit of research about math education when I spoke before Congress in 2000 about the importance of women in mathematics. The session of Congress was all about raising more scholarships for girls in college. I told them I felt that i...
My wife was born and raised in Italy until she was about 9, and then she came to America, and her mom was a great cook, and they have great recipes, and whenever her mom would come into town, we would have all these friends just randomly showing up a...
I could have probably raised them in L.A. and they would have been great and had so many things at their fingertips and been exposed to so many things. But we travel a lot, so I don't think that moving out of town is sheltering the girls at all. Mayb...
I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I'd get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period b...
I always knew I wanted to have children. When I met my husband, Rande, I thought, 'This is the guy.' When you are getting ready to become a mom, being in love with someone just isn't enough. You need to think about whether he would be a good parent a...
In an era when party fundraising is badly tainted, dinners are a really good way of raising cash for campaigning. Lots of people giving very small amounts of money through ticket sales and raffle prizes: yes, it's much harder work than big donations,...
I think most of us are raised with preconceived notions of the choices we're supposed to make. We waste so much time making decisions based on someone else's idea of our happiness - what will make you a good citizen or a good wife or daughter or actr...
Growing up, I came to love Egypt and respect Islam, but I never thought to go beyond the surface. Back in Canada, many of my father's Egyptian friends questioned his decision not to raise his only child more strictly in the faith. I was not taught sa...
Being that I was raised in the Catholic faith, I am very careful about what I choose. I've turned down a lot of projects that... could have helped me a lot financially, and I've quit shows because of where they were going and because I feel like I ha...
I did not want to raise a genetically compromised child. I did not want my children to have to contend with the massive diversion of parental attention, and the consequences of being compelled to care for their brother after I died. I wanted a geneti...
My mom is a huge woman of worth for me because she's been my idol my whole life. My mom was someone who juggled everything. She had her own career, she raised five kids, she was Superwoman... and she was never satisfied doing just one thing because.....
For a really long time in my life, I fought against how I look. Because I was raised Catholic in school, where everyone had to wear a suit and tie. I hated everything that stood for. And I realized when I walked down the street, everyone would see th...
I was raised in a reform synagogue. I think we all bring with us a sense of when hard things happen to us, we find ourselves asking questions of why are these things happening to me at this time in my life. I think in that sense, there's a certain re...
I am disappointed that my 25 years in public life have apparently not earned me the benefit of the doubt, but I understand that Senator Mitchell's report has raised many serious questions. I plan to publicly answer all of those questions at the appro...
My mom worked at McDonald's, and she decided she wanted to make more money, so she got into the management program at McDonald's. And that's how you move up the chain. It's not by demanding that minimum wage is raised; it's by actually acquiring the ...
