During my years of being close to people engaged in changing the world I have seen fear turn into courage. Sorrow into joy. Funerals into celebration. Because whatever the consequences, people, standing side by side, have expressed who they really are, and that ultimately they believe in the love of the world and each other enough to be that.
Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would've wanted to play 10 years ago, I don't want to play now.
America is much less violent than it was 20, 30 years ago, and immigration is much less a problem than it was not just 20, 30 years ago, but when I came in as president.
At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
I am inclined to believe that one who is a coward will be born after death as an insect or a worm, that there is no salvation for a coward even after millions of years of penance.
I understand that the worst people in England at a time were ran to America, for some reason.
Then slavery came and calls of aggression. But we've been there 600 years and there ain't no peace between black and whites because the cultures are different - like the Chinese and Mexicans cannot integrate: the music is different, the eating is different.
The observance of Thanksgiving Day-as a function-has become general of late years. The Thankfulness is not so general. This is natural. Two-thirds of the nation have always had hard luck and a hard time during the year, and this has a calming effect upon their enthusiasm.
You have to transmit to them what its like being in the theater. And it has to come from somewhere inside you and not by being like what somebody did last year.
It is better to allow our lives to speak for us than our words. God did not bear the cross only two thousand years ago. He bears it today, and he dies and is resurrected from day to day. It would be a poor comfort to the world if it had to depend on a historical God who died two thousand years ago. Do not, then, preach the God of history, but show him as he lives today through you.