To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.
It will give them the opportunity to show themselves worthy of the respect and friendship of peace-loving nations, and in time, to take an honorable place among members of the United Nations.
I don't think men are that attracted by glamour. I think women are attracted by glamour. I think men are attracted by a sense of friendship.
It seems to me that trying to live without friends is like milking a bear to get cream for your morning coffee. It is a whole lot of trouble, and then not worth much after you get it.
There is no city or country in the world where women and girls live free of the fear of violence. No leader can claim: 'this is not happening in my backyard.'
The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.
Our democratic societies are in danger. In allowing ourselves to be infiltrated by fear, to be blinded by the passion of identity, we are entertaining the most serious illusions about our freedom.
I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, not as Democrats attacking the administration, but as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?
I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.
A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far.
We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.
Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see.
If you have spent any time with Barack Obama, you know he's a funny guy. He's a good guy. He knows sports.
Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it's more like you wait for the piece.
The Islam of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century was a poor thing. Nobody bothered about it. Islam was that funny sort of pure system of beliefs that depressed people in the Middle East held as their religion.
I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I've always enjoyed it. There's just something really, really funny about someone tearing into me.
It's funny, because I have periods where I just kind of go dark. I don't tweet, I don't talk, I don't interview, and then I have times where I do.
They're great girls. They're very funny, they're very smart, they're fun to be with. They're very lively, as I think people can tell. And you know, they're very confident girls.
I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.
You know how old I am? I'm so old, I remember when Letterman used to be funny and it was presidents who were serious. That's how old I am.
Humor has historically been tied to the mores of the day. The Yellow Kid was predicated on what people thought was funny about the immigrant Irish. When you're different in a society, you're funny.
