In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.
Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation.
Some of us, for better or worse, develop very stable, consistent, and largely predictable machineries of self. But in others, the self machinery is more flexible and more open to unexpected turns.
For pure joy, I look at a small painting by Arbit Blatas. An ocean liner is at the center of the composition, perhaps ready to depart. It holds the promise of discovery.
I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.
Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.
Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.
Original, in French: La bonne cuisine est la base du véritable bonheur. English: Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness.
It is only when parental feelings are ineffective or too ambivalent or when the mother's emotions are temporarily engaged elsewhere that children feel lost.
How one can live without being able to judge oneself, criticize what one has accomplished, and still enjoy what one does, is unimaginable to me.
Everyone here says in a surprised manner that I have grown... they are so stupid and do not notice that I am standing up straighter!
Like most parents, I think, my children have been the source of some of my most intense joys and despairs, my deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral achievements.
It turns out that popularity is scary. I don't feel comfortable receiving so much attention from people; perhaps that's because I'm just a kampong boy.
In reference to Cat Stevens, it is very, very important we have accurate information on our terrorist watch list and our no fly list and that you have a remedy.
All the knowing ones were consulted as to the issue, and they all agreed, to a man, in one of two opinions: either that Bob would flog Billy, or Billy would flog Bob.
This is the world. Half of it is lit by the sun and the other half remains in darkness. It is the same with life. There is good and bad and it's our duty to remain in the light, be good.
People's identities as Indians, as Asians, or as members of the human race, seemed to give way - quite suddenly - to sectarian identification with Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh communities.
I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.
Everything tastes better with butter. Meat that has fat in it is tender in a certain way, flavorful in a certain way. It's hard to deny the flavor quotient there.
In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We've been working on it for 12 years. We've learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it.
I will go to my grave in a state of abject endless fascination that we all have the capacity to become emotionally involved with a personality that doesn't exist.
