I think public intellectuals have a responsibility - to be self-critical on the one hand,

to do serious, nuanced work rigorously executed; but to also be able to get off those perches and out of those ivory towers and speak to the real people who make decisions; to speak truth to power and the powerless with lucidity and eloquence.
Michael Eric Dyson

Complexity excites the mind, and order rewards it. In the garden, one finds both, including vanishingly small orders too complex to spot, and orders so vast the mind struggles to embrace them.
Diane Ackerman

Corporations are created by the people, acting through their governments. We grant them corporate charters that confer certain legal rights and privileges, like the ability to enter into contracts, limited liability and perpetual life.
Jim McGovern

Because I am really interested in gardening, I do really interesting plants, not even always flowers. And because I have grown them, I really know them like friends. I paint everything from exotic orchids to rosehips growing wild in a hedge. They just have to speak to me.
Emma Tennant

Prior to Magellan, due to the fact that we knew it was so hot on Venus, we thought that the rocks at the surface would behave more plastically, more like Silly Putty than like solid rock in the way that we think of it, like the rocks that I'm sitting on.
Ellen Stofan

I've had a lot of disappointments. I think my biggest disappointment is the failure of elected officials to make good on their promises in regards to the environment or anything else, really. I have very little faith in politicians.
Paul Watson

Our eyeball hours are scarce, indeed. That's why Google wants us to do as much as possible online, in range of their ads, and is willing to spend billions creating more reasons and ways for us to do so.
Douglas Rushkoff

Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming.
Greg Boyle

We can choose a path that leads us into trouble. It all comes down to our decisions at the end of the day.
Gabby Douglas

The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.
Ben Shapiro

I've played a lot of villains. The villains are always fun because you can just go fractionally bigger than life. It's always a grey area because you don't want to end up mustache-twirling and making them a little false, but you always get to play a little more, whereas the lead guy has to be a little more straight.
Neil Jackson

Gemeoss

I remember someone saying to my mom that it must be so glamorous to have

a child acting in movies. They had no idea how hard it was for her. Douglas Booth The No. 1 thing is the product. The goods have to be good, but I care about how you feel about it. Mickey Drexler I'm much more interested in lesser-known eccentrics and characters and performers. Like Matthew Buchinger, who was born in Germany in 1674, had no arms or legs and yet did magic, and had 14 kids, and made the most extraordinary calligraphy. Ricky Jay A career for me is something like building a bridge. You know, where to put the lifts. You have a plan. I have a blueprint for each film, but not for my life. Claire Denis I'm terribly nostalgic, but I'm with the Elizabethans who thought nostalgia was a disease. It's a dangerous place to be because you can get caught up in it. Mark Gatiss I deal with the human psychology and evil. They are my twin issues. Greg Iles I've been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they're loath t...

One cannot be too careful in the selection of adjectives for descriptions. Words or compounds

which describe precisely, and which convey exactly the right suggestions to the mind of the reader, are essential. H. P. Lovecraft I got scars on my face that tell some kind of story. I'm looking in the mirror, and I got one scar that's really two scars - half from a baseball bat and half from playing football in college. I'll tell you, though, after a while, your face gets so wrinkled up you can hardly see them. Kris Kristofferson One of the things my father taught me was you should not exclude those who are opposed to your ideas. Benigno Aquino III Sometimes when it comes to the iconic kind of moments, when I read the script for the first time, you get little goose bumps or something because it really is kind of exciting. Aaron Ashmore Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done. John Caudwell I designed the miniskirt that caused so much havoc in the ...

When you find a song that you love, you just have to do it -

why would I try to match it? When I wrote more of the songs in the '90s - 'Nick of Time' and other songs I was surprised I came up with - it was because nobody else was saying what I wanted to say. Bonnie Raitt When journalists and politicians speak of a dwindling middle class that's under economic assault and a poor community that's getting bigger, they're talking about Ferguson. Independent of the racial demographics and dynamics of Ferguson, Missouri, there's a 'Ferguson' near you. Jesse Jackson It's become impossible to enjoy most quality television shows because the hurt or endangered women device is so frequently used. Jessica Valenti I was 65 in May, and when I have just shaved, I see my father. I realise that I now have the same facial idiosyncrasies he had: little twitches here and there, mouth and nose movements, even the way he would tilt his head. Rick Wakeman It's how the '70s were for movies, the 2000s are for TV...

I remember, at MIT, we had to write an essay about something mathematical that you do

in your extra time. I basically wrote about how dance, to me, was geometry: it was all shapes. Payal Kadakia I know everything that I do is going to be more powerful and touch more people in a positive way than if I go out there and cause havoc. Trevor Jackson I think I've had an illustrious career. Paul Pierce For me, it's always the same: worrying about how I can get better, the techniques I can do. Robbie Lawler Jean Thompson's short-story collection 'Who Do You Love' is a beautiful book, but a hell of a sad one. Jeff Giles You know what's funny? There's times when you catch a ball and really didn't even see that ball. You're like, 'That couldn't have been all me.' Calvin Johnson I wasn't a fanboy of horror. I didn't grow up on horror movies. I grew up loving all movies. I still love all movies, but I particularly love scary movies - as much for the culture around them as the movies themselves. Jason Blum I always sang in scho...

No one remembers how the American people responded day-to-day, week-to-week, or month-to-month about the decisions

that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower made during the most dangerous decades in American and world history. But we know now that they did what was right, and we honor them for it. Donna Brazile If you come out of the gate with a finger pointed, then you really aren't opening the door to any sort of resolution to whatever the problem may be. Whether it's about race or sexual orientation or religion, if you can't empathize with the opposing party, then you can't really meet in the middle. Octavia Spencer My voice broke very late. I think that, deep down, I knew that once it broke, my self-esteem would plummet, as I'd never be head chorister again. Tom Hollander As a child, the conversations that I liked to have with my friends - or with anyone, for that matter - were always about religion. Christy Turlington Citizenship must be precious, not handed out like candy in a parade. We don't ride along and throw out citizen...

The whole community of people with disabilities was alive, politically alive. I give Justin Dart

credit for that. He traveled to every state in the country. He really made people with disabilities understand that they had some political power. Major Owens Given the amount of unjust suffering and unhappiness in the world, I am deeply grateful for, sometimes even perplexed by, how much misery I have been spared. Dennis Prager The other part of outsourcing is this: it simply says where the work can be done outside better than it can be done inside, we should do it. Alphonso Jackson Money differs from an automobile or mistress in being equally important to those who have it and those who do not. John Kenneth Galbraith Everything in this world has a hidden meaning. Nikos Kazantzakis I never really did any disco dancing. Barry Gibb Our music's kind of about taking something ugly and making it beautiful. Jerry Cantrell

I don't know whether we Church members fully appreciate the Book of Mormon, one of

our sacred scriptures, as we really should. Joseph B. Wirthlin I had written a book. For various reasons, the publishing industry had decided that my book was going to be 'important.' The novel had taken me 12-and-a-half years to write, and after being with the book for so long, I had no real perspective on the merits or demerits of what I had written. I hoped it was good, but feared that it wasn't. Akhil Sharma The Green Arrow stuff that I've responded to from the past is the Mike Grell stuff. I've liked a lot of other stuff, but I think for me, the direction and the mood and the tone that I really want is something much darker and more aggressive and really fast-paced action. Jeff Lemire I don't believe that a writer does something wonderful spontaneously. I believe it's the result of years of living, of study, reading, his very personality and temperament. At one particular moment, all these come together and the artist 'expresses' himsel...

I remember growing up thinking that astronauts and their job was the coolest thing you

could possibly do... But I absolutely couldn't identify with the people who were astronauts. I thought they were movie stars. David M. Brown The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect. Frank Lloyd Wright Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance. Maurice Maeterlinck Our mothers and fathers want change. They worked all of their lives, but today live in destitution. Viktor Yushchenko It's a very, very tricky situation. I haven't said yes to either of them. Brigitte Nielsen If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you. Muhammad Ali I maintain that nothing useful and lasting can emerge from violence. Shirin Ebadi

The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is

why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription. Norman Cousins I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither 'good' or 'bad', and who knows neither love nor hatred. Savitri Devi If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? Joan Baez Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau For my part, it was Greek to me. William Shakespeare It's part of the job to compensate for outfit. Victoria Pratt Hence a ship is said to head the sea, when her course is opposed to the setting or direction of the surges. William Falconer

You remember France, it's the country that financed the American Revolution... OK, it was in

their self-interest, but still, they made it happen. Let's face it: without the French, there would be no America... in other words, without them, there is no us. Richard Belzer I do recall at one point being part of WWE and other guys taking the risk of stepping away, and a lot of guys don't do it because of the fear that it's not going to be the same. Rey Mysterio People didn't know where they could trade. When everybody owes each other IOUs that can be in multiple places at once, that's how the system couldn't tell any more who owned what and who owed what to whom. Blockchain could have prevented 2008. Patrick M. Byrne I find dipping one's toe into all of these people's lives is one of the major exciting points of being an actor. This dilettantism. Rupert Friend I think that when I was first starting out, even after I was on 'Gilmore Girls,' when things were going pretty well, I was constantly focused on what's next, how can my...