The availability of private insurance provides tremendous insulation for millions of individuals.

Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization.

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place.

In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.

There are children who are working in textile businesses in Asia who would be prostitutes on the streets if they did not have those jobs.

If you look at the history of the American capital market, there's probably no innovation more important than the idea of generally accepted accountancy principles.

I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.

I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.

It certainly was difficult to sell NAFTA because it's always difficult to sell open markets.

The availability of private insurance provides tremendous insulation for millions of individuals.

I promise you that there are a lot of people involved in various kinds of retail activities who think they have a crucial role in the economy, and they're right.

Many children are taught to believe in God. I came to believe in the power of systems analysis.

Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?

Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.

I was a teacher for a long time. I taught at a community college: voice, theory, humanities. And nowadays, music education is a dying thing. Funding is being cut more and more and more.

I could read music before I could read.

We have to be responsible in what we say as leaders.

I still can't manage to keep a journal, and people have been telling me to since the fourth grade.

It's unbelievable the primitive feelings that are aroused by rapid change.

Pure, holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh.

It's the Industrial Revolution and the growth of urban concentrations that led to a sense of anonymity.

Obama is a president, who I think is anti-jobs.

Too many lives are needed to make just one.

A program to make municipal composting of food and yard waste mandatory and then distributing the compost free to area farmers would shrink America's garbage heap, cut the need for irrigation and fossil-fuel fertilizers in agriculture, and improve the nutritional quality of the American diet.

One of the things that's beautiful about New Orleans is how culturally rich we are and how well we have worked together. People call us a gumbo. It's really important that we get focused on the very simple notion that diversity is a strength, it's not a weakness.

I do have faith. I don't have faith that a God exists, nor do I have faith that one does not; I have absolute faith that I do not know, cannot know, am only human, am an infinitesimal creature packed onto a cramped planet crowded with seven billion bodies, and as many yearning hearts, and as many questioning minds.

Comedians still make fun of Bill's out-of-control appetites, but with Hillary, the mockery is about how she lets nothing be out of control.

I had a really hard time growing up; we were a large family, and we didn't have much money at home.

In fact the truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.

Paris is where my family are, but it's not really home now because I have dear friends in London and dear friends in New York.

I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm an activist, I'm a writer and I'm just a student of the world.

It would be fair to say that the start of my life in Manchester was not perfect, but there have been many other times when I've had setbacks, and I have never given up.

There's fierce competition between all the networks to get the guest who can bring the most pertinent information about whatever the story of the moment happens to be.

The slogan of the moderate Republican Party is this: we are rich, and we are not going to take it any more.

Some people make a great film and then they can't follow up.

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'