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Don't be afraid to go against the current, when they want to steal our hope, when they propose rotten values to us, values like food that has gone bad-and when food has gone bad it makes us sick, these values make us sick. We have to go against the current! And you, young people, be the first: Go against the grain and be proud of going against the grain. Go on, be brave and go against the current! And be proud of doing it!
There are also people that still choose to support racist rhetoric because they feel white dominance in America is slipping through their fingers. To them, "diversity" is a codeword for white genocide. They claim that their "homelands" are being overrun by minorities and are desperate for solutions that ensure their "white survival." This fear, of course, is irrational and solely based on a loss of white power and control.
I have discovered in a lifetime of traveling in primitive regions, a lifetime of seeing people living in the wilderness and using it, that there is a hard core of wilderness need in everyone, a core that makes its spiritual values a basic human necessity. There is no hiding it....Unless we can preserve places where the endless spiritual needs of man can be fulfilled and nourished, we will destroy our culture and ourselves.
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
Right now, America doesn't ask us to do anything besides pay taxes. We don't even have to vote. But as psychologists will tell you, when you have to sacrifice for something, you value it more. What about national service for young people? Everybody between 18 and 24 could spend a year or two working for this country in some capacity. It'd be an amazing thing. And it would mix this country racially, culturally, economically.
At least George W. Bush feels like - and I've heard him say it - "You can't judge me now, because look at Abraham Lincoln. When he was in the middle of that war and 600,000 people died, he was vilified for the Gettysburg Address because they felt it was too short and almost insulting, and now you look back and it's considered one of the great speeches of all time and he's considered one of the great presidents of all time."
I found that most people don't really want to know the truth. There are plenty of people who want to know the truth on their terms or require that the truth be contained within certain boundaries of comfort. But truth can never be known this way. You have to seek truth from a place of not knowing, and that can be a very threatening place because we think we already know the truth or we are afraid of what the truth might be.
... everything seemed to him a uniform shade of gray- even the people! He had been unable to believe it could rain so much in one place, and so unceasingly. The damp had seemed to come up from the floors and into his bones, so that he'd thought he would eventually sprout mold, in the manner of a tree. "You do get used to it," he said "Even if sometimes you feel as if you out to be able to be wrung out like a washrag." p 311
About what mainly constituted what you ask, it was something other. It was just a certain inclination to meet people. And as far as possible, to change something in the other, but also to let me be changed by him. At any event, I had no resistance, I put no resistance to it. I already began as a young man. I felt I have not the right to want to change another if I am not open to be changed by him as far as it is legitimate.
Managing risk is a key variable, frankly, all aspects of life, business is just one of them, and one of the things that most people do in terms of managing risk, that's actually bad thinking, is they think they can manage risk to zero. Everything has some risk to it. You know, you drive your car down the street, a drunk driver may hit you. So what you're doing is you're actually trying to get to an acceptable level of risk.
Condelleza Rice and Colin Powell are both dangerous people. What they did in Haiti [2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide] is a good measure of it. They destroyed a democracy. They squelched loans that had been approved by the Inter-American Development Bank. They did everything behind the scenes, including arming the thugs that came to overrun the country. They're frauds.
I believe that everyone has expertise to sell and that people want to purchase that knowledge in a convenient way. Just as Airbnb made people realize that an extra room in their home or apartment can be a source of income, the new Learning Annex provides a platform for people to monetize their knowledge. It’s an exciting time for online adult education and our new platform is the way to unify an otherwise fragmented market.
When I was setting out to be an artist, I said: If I can just produce one work that some people think is good, if I can become an obscure cult artist, that's all I want. Well, I attained that. I'm an obscure cult artist, and I think now, Why didn't I say I want to be another Picasso or something? What other options were open to me? But I was convinced I couldn't achieve great things because I don't have a steady-state mind.
It is the first time since 1993 that Russians have come out into the streets without an explicit permission from the government to do so. The main difference between the protests of 2011-2012 and these protests today is that they didn't have permits. These were - the people who were coming out into the streets were very young people, for the most part, who knew that they were all risking arrest. It's an extraordinary event.
What I find in a creative company is while there is a desire to build a management foundation that can feel clear and consistent, the unique product we're in Illumination Entertainment making doesn't always allow for that. So rather than following management strategy that talks about building your structure and then staffing that structure, I tend to build the structure around the strengths of the individual people we have.
If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways to be hospitable to the unusual person. You don't get innovation as a democratic process. You almost get it as an anti-democratic process. Certainly you get it as an antithetical process, so you have to have an environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation.
Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.
The precision of hisskill places his work beyond the tentative and the experimental stage. He is continually searching and exploring both himself and his surroundings. and in this exploration of the realm of places, people and things, contrasts and relationships, Callahan is no respecter of conventional technical formula or code. His delicate sense of pattern is an integral part of his photography and not a thing by itself.
At the end of the day, people (customers) don't necessarily buy into what you do; they buy into why you do it. People buy Apple because they love the Apple brand - what it stands for - they feel proud to be associated with that brand. What makes Google or Virgin or any of these 'superior' brands what they are is that they have a mission to change the world. Those are the kinds of companies that will endure the test of time.
Probably the single most commen response I get from my readesr, be it through e-mails or letters, is that they did not know much, or at times, they're quite frank, they didn't care much about Afghanistan. But they pay attention more after reading these novels, and at times it has triggered this humaitarian spirt: some have donated money or at time times, people have joined humatiarian organizations that work in Afghanistan.
I find music the the clearest and easiest way in to what a movie will feel like - more so than visual references or other movies or dense dossiers of research material. Every now and then I'll send a piece of music or two to people I'm working with - actors or heads of department - when I think it'll help them get a sense of the kind of movie I'm proposing. Often those pieces will end up in the movie - sometimes they won't.
As anyone who has received or dispensed psychotherapy knows, it's a profession whose mainspring is love. Nearly everyone who visits a therapist has a love disorder of one sort or another, and each has a story to tell - of love lost or denied, love twisted or betrayed, love perverted or shackled to violence. Broken attachments litter the office floors like pick-up sticks. People appear with frayed seams and spilling pockets.
The beauty of shooting on something that's not in front of an audience is that you can just cut out the times you're laughing. You can cut to the other person and try to use that moment, right before you break. There's an energy to those performances. There's a reason people were laughing. There was something very special. That little extra something was in that line delivery or in that improv, so you try to use that stuff.
I wrote poetry for seven or eight years, maybe longer, before I could say I was a poet. If people asked, I'd say I wrote poetry; I wouldn't go further. I was in my mid- to late-thirties before I felt that I was a poet, which I think meant that I had begun to embody my poems in some way. I wasn't just a writer of them. Hard to say what, as a poet, my place in the world is. Some place probably between recognition and neglect.
Anyone that knows me will tell you that any time we're going somewhere, if there's a US flag, they'll always point it out because they know I love it. Just how our whole country started and just the migration of Europeans to this country, all of that, just the history of everything has fascinated me, but my biggest thing is I want people to understand that when there are hostilities between nations there's always two sides.
Class warfare always sounds good. Taking action against the rich and the powerful and making 'em pay for what they do, it always sounds good. But that's not the job of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court standing on the side of the American people? The Supreme Court adjudicates the law. The Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of things and other things. The Supreme Court's gotten way out of focus, in my opinion.
It occurred to me that building a company was the best way to align a group of people towards building something great. And its really... it's a good organizational structure where you can really reward people. If they're building something that's good, you can you work with partners and reward them if the product that you're developing work well. It's a good way to get the best people involved to build something very good.
Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back.
In other ways, you constantly have to change people's opinion of you as one thing, especially if you want to play different roles. You have to shatter that image sometimes. I've had to do it before with stage roles, to get roles. I'm drawn to kind of darker, misfit things. I would like to, especially in film, play against type and do some heavier stuff. I'm intrigued by projects that deal with problematic people and things.
The influence of (the national parks) is far beyond what is usually esteemed or usually considered. It has a relation to efficiency -- the working efficiency of the people, to their health, and particularly to their patriotism -- which would make the parks worth while, if there were not a cent of revenue in it, and if every visitor to the parks meant that the Government would have to pay a tax of $1 simply to get him there.
Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else.
I don't know if any of you feel this way, but it's like eventually, you see a woman come on screen and you go, "Oh, thank God!" You just sort of need a break from all this testosterone, which happened, I think, in one of my films, The Hurt Locker. I was in it for like five minutes, and people were like, "You were in that movie!" And I was like, "Well, kind of." And they were like, "No, you were!" 'Cause they needed a woman!
Maybe you just have those impromptu conversations, or where all of the sudden you're standing on the corner waiting to cross the street and you notice three people looking up and you look up with them. And you all smile at each other because you're seeing a little piece of a rainbow between two buildings, and that little rainbow and you all just shared a New York moment, and that's awesome, and then you keep on in your way.
It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition. This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.
We now live in an amazing digital world, and television is firmly part of that brave new world. Television is still the way to reach the most citizens and talk to them – and with them - about how the EU affects their lives. It's still the way to bring people together – to laugh, to debate, to learn. In a world that takes a faster and faster pace, it is nice to know you can slow down once in a while with a good TV programme.
A few years ago, the Bose Acoustics Corporation had a new product, the Bose Wave Music System. And their ad campaign for it was not successful until they changed one thing. At the top of the ad they said, "Hear what you've been missing." And that caused the skyrocketing of the interest in purchasing of the product. Why? Because with something new, people are uncertain, and when they are uncertain, they want to avoid losses.
Yeah, I know a lot of soldiers. I know soldiers who don't like to hear thank you for your service. And I know soldiers that do like to be told thank you for your service. The ones who don't like to be told are the ones who've been through serious sh*t. They don't care about feedback. They did their job. They did what they have to do. Sometimes the people that thank them are exactly the ones they don't want to be thanked by.
I always tell people that I have never ever gone dancing in my life. But that's the point. It's the point of dreaming of doing it, imagining doing it. My music is like a fantasy version of it, not a practical version of it. With the way a club DJ would make a track - they are in the club, they know how to get people excited. I don't know how to get people excited. I'm just imagining euphoria; I'm not necessarily feeling it.
Be skeptical, but not as a social position, not claiming to be so intelligent that you cannot believe what other people say. It's not about being right and making everybody else wrong. No, you are skeptical because you know without a doubt that everybody lives in their own story, and in their story they have their own truth. But it's only truth in their mind, just as your truth is only truth in your mind, and nobody else's.
What I do is to collaborate with each actor and work one-on-one to create a character. And that is a matter of huge complexity and is a combination of a great deal of discussion and a lot of practical work. It involves a lot of consideration for the real people out there, and all kinds of sources of real people. The result is the character. But I'm not supposed to talk about what it is we do, because it's nobody's business.
All of the external circumstances and the rude and difficult people we meet, instead of getting angry, upset, or frustrated, we see that we can take them all and use them on the path in a way that actually invigorates and strengthens us, rather than defeats us. It's all very practical advice, and that's why I talk a lot about how to make our daily life into Dharma practice, otherwise it's easy to feel hopeless and helpless.
With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.
I think people, unfortunately, do live in constant fear. I think the government - and people in general - create scenarios people fear, because ultimately through fear you can control people. I wish we could live in a world where there would be no fear, but it's a driving force in many decisions people make these days, whether it's personal, economic, or even job-related. A lot of people stay out of fear in a job they hate.
The ancient Masters didn't try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know. When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don't know, people can find their own way. If you want to learn how to govern, avoid being clever or rich. The simplest pattern is the clearest. Content with an ordinary life, you can show all people the way back to their own true nature.
When Donald Trump campaigned for president, he told the American people that he would be a different type of Republican, that he would take on the political and economic establishment, that he would stand up for working people, that he understood the pain that families all across this country were experiencing. Well, sadly, it was just cheap and dishonest campaign rhetoric that was meant to get votes, nothing more than that.
If there is any one skill that every professional must learn, it is how to brand himself or herself in the marketplace. A brand provides certainty to customers and lets them know that what they`re getting is the best. People don`t like to make decisions. Once we decide, for example, the kind of toothpaste we prefer, rarely do we change. We have to make so many decisions every day in our lives that most of us are overwhelmed.
I have to tell you, a few people had very controversial feelings about what I was doing with Gucci at the beginning, and now, after a couple of years, they are changing their minds. I want to give journalists the time and space to know me and what I'm doing better. But it's not a priority for me. At the end of the day, I am not an artist; I am not doing a performance; I'm doing things that need to be sold. And I know my job.
There's only one honest way to measure affluence; that's by comparing the capability of producing goods and services with the desire of people to enjoy them. It's a lousy, crooked trick to compare this society with China or some such place and then say we're affluent. It's a piece of intellectual crookery even to compare this economy with itself ten or twenty years ago. We should compare what we have with what we could have.
I've never been one of those to kind of like, 'I want somebody to do something against their nature to titillate me.' That never holds any interest. And I always want people to be who they are and if they're being not who they are I feel like it's false and, therefore, less easy to connect to. I don't need them to kiss or to display physical intimacy. I think that almost becomes too obvious. I love playing in the suggestive.
There is not enough evidence, consistent evidence to make it as fact, and I say that because for theory to become a fact, it needs to consistently have the same results after it goes through a series of tests. The tests that they put- that they use to support evolution do not have consistent results. Now too many people are blindly accepting evolution as fact. But when you get down to the hard evidence, it's merely a theory.