Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.

It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.

Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.

Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.

The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.

The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

We Americans really seem to be the only truly non-socialist economy on earth.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.

A vision is best presented as a story that people can relate to.

Be your own lamp, seek no other refuge but yourself, Let truth be your light." ~Buddha

There are two kinds of people in this world, and I am one of them.

It's easier for me to sit with the producers and the writers and I give them my feelings and my thoughts and what I think I feel like singing about and then they go away and write it.

I have friends that are laying in the gutter right now that were rich people and they're no longer rich people because of what the banks did to them.

Martial arts should be part of every girl's education.

Sunblock! I don't like to tan my face because it's bad for wrinkles.

I don't wanna be shaped like a girl. I love being shaped like a woman, and trust me ladies, your man won't mind either.

I'm always looking for relations between my work and the old masters.

Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.