What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless 'Why?' and 'What next?' ("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")
Worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have. It doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, just empties today of its strength.
Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively.
Today's China is not in the least shut out from the rest of the world. Trends come to us from all over the world. And the Internet is really developed in China. We get news from all over the world.
As a painter today you have to work without that essential platform. But if one does not deceive oneself and accepts this lack of certainty, other things may come into play.
We're in a post-conceptual era where it's really the artist's idea and vision that are prized rather than the ability to master the crafts that support the work. Today, our understanding of an artist is closer to a philosopher than to a craftsman.
The primary goal of publishing general fiction and non-fiction was never profit - though profit was essential to stay in the game. Publishing is a vocation in which the work is its own reward, an insufficient goal for today's conglomerates.
People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.
Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.
I like to study the question or the problem or the opportunity in hand, work with the team to come with the right answer, make a decision, and act upon it. Some people have said that, actually, today they pretty much like their bankers dull.
It took about six years to get the Black Lung stuff. It didn't come just instantly. Sometimes, I see lobby groups, today, upset because they work the whole session and nothing happens.
If you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But ten years later somehow, you don't quite know what problems are worth working on.
We are here today because of grass-roots conservatives all over the place. That's the way the democratic process is supposed to work. It's not supposed to be a bunch of guys in a smoky room in Austin picking the next Senator.
The serious problems facing the world today will never be solved until women are able to use their full potential on behalf of themselves, their families, and their global and local communities, as the World Bank and others have discovered.
There is so much more fashion coverage online, so women today are really seeing the collections. They're a lot savvier and more aware of the discrepancies between what they see on the runway and what they end up seeing in their local shops.
I think, with never-ending gratitude, that the young women of today do not and can never know at what price their right to free speech and to speak at all in public has been earned.
For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.
Between 1939 and 1945 you produced weapons and war equipment valued at thirteen billion dollars, 70 per cent of which you shipped to your allies. The same process is going on today in Canada's much larger and growing industry.
Henry Kissinger is the greatest living war criminal in the world today, with the blood of millions of people in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and Chile and East Timor on his hands. He will never appear in a court or be behind bars.
Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.
The United States stands with our friends in Britain as they recover from today's shock of terrorism. These barbaric acts strengthen our resolve and remind us all of the danger of complacency during our continued war on terror.
