We right now give $15 billion every year as subsidies to private insurers under the Medicare system. Doesn't work any better through the private insurers. They just skim off $15 billion.
One of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years.
I'm skeptical that [the Republicans] can do [something better with healthcare] mainly because for seven years now, including when we first tried to pass health care, I said to 'em, "Okay, if [Obamacare] doesn't work tell me what does."
...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.
We know, Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers amongst us. How little they know, whereof they speak! There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago, I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday, labors on his own account today; and will hire others to labor for him tomorrow.
It's hard to overemphasize how important Ford's deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first. Yet deregulation set the stage for an enormous wave of creative destruction in the 1980s.
While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.
Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.
[The U.S. Treasury] can borrow basically unlimited amounts. They can stay there for years and years. These assets will be worth more money over time. So when Merrill Lynch sells a bunch of mortgage-related assets at 22 cents on the dollar like they did a month or so ago, the buyer goes - is going to make money, and he's going to make a lot more money if it happens to be an institution like the U.S. government which has very, very cheap borrowing costs.
People are very hungry for something new. I think they are interested in being called to be a part of something larger than the sort of small, petty, slash-and-burn politics that we have been seeing over the last several years.
Chancellor [Angela] Merkel is perhaps the only leader left among our closest allies that was there when I arrived. So in some ways we are now the veterans of many challenges over the last eight years.
I had the honor to meet Geraldine Ferraro on a few occasions over the years at the DNC and what struck me was how she managed to be both gutsy and graceful at the same time. Without a doubt she was a trailblazer who not only stepped outside the box but who dared to redefine it. I always left her presence with the sense that she truly knew what she was talking about but that she never felt the need to browbeat you with it - instead she inspired people to listen and then act, and to me thats the hallmark of a true leader.
We want to see the Iranians engage, and as you know, we have attempted to bring about that engagement over the course of the last three-plus years. It has not proven effective.
I'm not that worried about [my parents] right now because they are happy people. I'm pleased that in their later years, in spite of physical ailments, they're upbeat.
What I know for sure is this: The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal for this year is, you can get there - as long as you're willing to be honest with yourself about the preparation and work involved. There are no back doors, no free rides. There's just you, this moment, and a choice.
I think it's really important to enlarge the issue behind abortion. I have been serving for over two decades and I have seen year in and year out largely the Republicans voting against women's contraception, family planning.
The first forty years of our life give the text, the next thirty furnish the commentary upon it, which enables us rightly to understand the true meaning and connection of the text with its moral and its beauties.
I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.
Haply for I am black, And have not those soft parts of conversation That chamberers have; or for I am declined Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much— She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief Must be to loathe her. O curse of marriage, That we can call these delicate creatures ours And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad And live upon the vapor of a dungeon Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others’ uses. Yet ’tis the plague of great ones; Prerogatived are they less than the base. ’Tis destiny unshunnable, like death.