They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics, to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership, we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars...
If you want to know why Republicans and conservatives are in a political crisis, you need only consider the fact that the Right's deeply held view now boils down to this: Taxes should not go up on the wealthy, and your health benefits should be cut.
We immigrants can sometimes sound a little hysterical about this because we come from places that have tried this and we know where it leads. Anybody who's lived in countries with socialized health care knows that it becomes the dominant political is...
You start realizing that maybe you're the one night a month that people have out, and they don't need to hear your political views or how dark you can get. They just want to laugh for an hour and go home. Once I wrapped my head around that, my act ev...
The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages.
My wife is not a public person. She is uncomfortable with the limelight, which is why I love her. I don't want a political wife - I want someone who, when I get home, I can have a normal life with.
The Social-Democratic Federation took part in all the political and economic struggles of the English working class; it took pains to bring Socialist views home to them, not only through agitation and propaganda, but also by actions.
I was a crown attorney in my home town in Nova Scotia, and I learned that victims of crime needed better laws to better protect them. I saw politics as a means to improve this protection for them.
There was a widespread indignation in the American media. They were saying, 'How can you make a movie during an election that's about politics? What are you doing? Are you trying to influence people's lives?' To which my response was, 'Well, I hope s...
Women are as much politicians as men, and I hope that more and more women will enter public life through politics, as this would not only increase participation of women in public life but also have a salutary effect for the amelioration of women's s...
My politics of optimism and hope still casts its lot with the Democrats - in the optimistic hope that the dying embers of its status as the party of our better angels, one that took risks for social justice, can still be fanned into a flame. But I'm ...
My childhood, adolescence and high school days are unusually important. If there has ever been a time that I developed a uniqueness and sense of humor and the ability to organize, it was then. In those early days, I developed the skills that gave me ...
The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talkin...
No matter how powerful our political and religious leaders think they are, they are as dust before the immense and implacable forces of history and progress. I just hope that they don't make too much of a mess or take too many more people down with t...
Humanity has experienced many revolutionary changes over the course of history: revolutions in agriculture, in science, industrial production, as well as numerous political revolutions. But these have all been limited to the external aspects of our i...
Few writers in history have ever been 'politically correct' (a notion that rapidly changes in any case), and there's no reason to imagine that gay writers will ever suit their readers, especially since that readership is splintered into ghettos withi...
The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, the...
The rise of the presidency began with the Louisiana Purchase, which in 1803 doubled the land mass of the United States. History taught the framers that, just as Rome changed from republic to empire with conquest of new lands, territorial acquisition ...
Venezuelans have a long history. So we are able to listen to each other, to talk to each other. From here were born the liberators of the region, and they said before and after that process we have a culture of political action. We are not in despair...
I wanted to tell a romantic and dark side of Ottoman history that was also slightly political, saying to the previous generation of writers, 'Look, I'm interested in Ottoman things, and I'm not afraid of it, and I'm doing something creative.'
Herbert Hoover was a man of genuine, fine character, but he lacked practical political sense. And he couldn't bend and shift and change with the requirements of the time. And he was a ruined President, because he was such a, I think, stiff-backed ide...
