Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Gay rights are not primarily marriage rights, and for the millions who live in unaccepting places with no resources, dignity remains elusive. I am lucky to have forged meaning and built identity, but that's still a rare privilege. And gay people deserve more, collectively, than the crumbs of justice.
I was at a Dolly Parton concert when I was about 9 years old. I saw her at the Ohio State Fair, and it was my first real concert that I'd been to. I saw that crowd and how they reacted and how great of a performer she was and the band. Just the energy of the whole thing collectively really captured me.
I say let's go back to a truer use of the word 'freedom.' Let's start with President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. I would add the freedom to bargain collectively. Those freedoms are under attack today.
We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program - Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. American culture worships explorers - look at the fame of Lewis and Clark, for example. The American people want to think of themselves as supporting exploration.
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.
I am now certain that we have no alternative but to reduce urgently the levels of carbon that we are still pumping into the atmosphere as though tomorrow simply didn't matter. If we don't act collectively and individually, our children and their children will reap a whirlwind which will obliterate their civilisation.
History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.
I loved teaching social studies. And I loved starting each year by teaching about John Locke and the social contract. That lesson helped me teach not just about our rules for the classroom, but how, in our democracy, we give up some individual rights to ensure we collectively have the right to live and prosper in a society.
The thing you miss most, when you don't play and you don't coach, is the huddle. You miss the huddle. You miss the ability to walk in the room where collectively players are from everywhere. Every race, every religion, every color. It don't matter, because you've got a common goal. You're trying to be something special as a team.
The thing I find really special in performance is that there is this slightly mystical thing that takes over when you're responding to a crowd and engaging in people's imaginations collectively in a room. I've always thought that one of the most incredible things about being alive is going to see some kind of performance like that.
We're as clever as we think we are, but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time - there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors.
It's about people rising up in Ferguson and in Egypt and in Occupy Wall Street and in every place where a community has had enough and decides to make change happen. It's not about praising one charismatic leader but celebrating thousands of them... 'Black Messiah' is not one man. It's a feeling that, collectively, we are all that leader.
'Nobody goes to jail.' This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth - and nobody went to jail.
The fundamental principles of prosperity in every country are so well understood that they need but little if any discussion. They are so simple that with the proper cooperative action the American people collectively can easily place this wonderful country of ours in the position that it is so well qualified to hold among the nations of the world.