I like people and I like hearing their stories. The way that they deliver them is always very particular and I think that their accents are integral to that.
In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a tenfold return to the people even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop.
The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born.
My favorite parts are definitely the traveling. Getting to see all the places that we've been is really amazing to me, [as well as] getting to meet all the people that we wouldn't normally meet. It's really awesome, because we really get to know their culture and see what it's like in other places in the world.
History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably.
When work is not going well, it's useful to remember that our identities stretch beyond what is on the business card, that we were people long before we became workers - and will continue to be human once we have put our tools down forever.
I think soft power definitely can work. But, you know, it depends on who you're dealing with. Some people are so intent upon power and keeping power that it's very difficult to conduct soft power.
I understand why people are discouraged about Iraq. I can understand that. We live in a, you know, world in which people hope things happen quickly. And this is a situation where things don't happen quickly because there's, you know, a very tough group of people using tactics - mainly the killing of innocent people - to achieve their objective, and they're skillful about how they do this. And they also know the impact of what it means on the consciousness of those of us who live in the free world. They know that.
It is hard to mesmerize ourselves, to whip our own top; but through sympathy we are capable of energy and endurance. Concert fires people to a certain fury of performance they can rarely reach alone.