If Lincoln is among history's truly great men, he didn't achieve that stature until his

final three years. This was when his long-held antipathy to slavery cohered into a dedicated hostility that gave larger purpose to the Civil War and also confirmed the logic of Lincoln's destiny.
Steve Erickson

When you're in the day-to-day grind, it just seems like it's another step along the way. But I find joy in the actual process, the journey, the work. It's not the end. It's not the end event.
Cal Ripken, Jr.

I prefer natural hardwood lump charcoal - the other stuff makes your food taste like Goodyear tires.
Jose Andres

I had a strong conviction that there was something out there in the world that was wonderful.
Mary Gaitskill

Who you are as a person has to do with what you think and how you feel. It has to do with how you love and how you care for people.
Scott Weiland

If teaching isn't rewarding and challenging, we're going to continue to lose our best teachers to work in other fields.
Michael Bennet

A key ingredient in innovation is the ability to challenge authority and break rules.
Vivek Wadhwa

Every administration has this idea to talk tough to Israel and make nice to the Arabs and the Palestinians, and that's the way to bring about peace. It's counter-productive - it's actually the opposite.
Chuck Schumer

It always seemed to me ironic that the McCain campaign kept referring sneeringly to Obama's meager resume - 'a mere community organizer!' - before he entered electoral politics. It was Obama's experience as a community organizer that proved such a killer app when he applied that skill to the Internet.
Tina Brown

All of the religions are looking after the poor. At least leave me alone to look after the rich. I am the rich man's guru.
Rajneesh

One thing we're going to focus on is the middle class and the crushing prices and stagnant wages they're facing. What motivates me is looking at my 3-year-old son and thinking about what we're passing on to him and his future wife and their future kids.
Bobby Schilling

Gemeoss

Urban Outfitters - I love it. It's almost like Forever 21, but for, like, the

24- to 25-year-old girl, getting a little bit older. Keke Palmer I'm the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for. Kirk Cameron I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses. Leonard Susskind Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. Joshua Roman Space X's Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with modules where earthlings can live. My teleporting technology is the number one way those individuals will get new information, new treatments of diseases that will occur on the planet, and new food sources. Craig Venter Brain cells are normally not sensitive to light. So by introdu...

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be

to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit. Robert Zemeckis There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. Jill Scott I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please. Jane Fonda For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American. Nora Roberts Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I...

Web searching and cellphone use both flourish in the wee hours. Before the dawn of

the web, I would stay up watching television. But there is something soporific about television: I would often nod off. Not so when I'm online. As technologies expand, these problems may only worsen. Sendhil Mullainathan To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin I'm the kind of person who likes to create the environment and mindset - not because I do it deliberately, but because that's how I like to live - where, from catering to makeup to hair to wardrobe, electricians, camera department lighting, sound, you know, it's our movie; we're together, and we have that camaraderie and that closeness. Steven Rodney McQueen There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro. Elliott...

I'm not a detail guy. I depend on accountants and administrators to do my detail

stuff for me, but I do know the overall picture and I know that if you put business people together in a room, not just politicians, they could shrink the deficit tremendously by good business tactics. John Paul DeJoria My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that. Emeril Lagasse If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn't you feel that way now that he's President Obama? You know there's something wrong with the kind of job he's done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him. Mitt Romney Well I travelled quite a lot in the east, and one of the things that impressed me greatly was the buddhist notion of the continuity of things, the wheel of life which is what we're talking about,...

IBM's long-standing mantra is 'Think.' What has always made IBM a fascinating and compelling place

for me, is the passion of the company, and its people, to apply technology and scientific thinking to major societal issues. Ginni Rometty I am going to get political on you. Because I am the most shallow person in the world, my mission is to see men's formal wear change a little bit. It is too rigid! Everybody looks like a penguin! Steven Cojocaru I was able to get operated on four days after I was diagnosed. It was just a matter of getting this baseball-sized tumor out of me. I reflect now on how lucky I was to be in the situation where I could get the best possible help and treatment. Eric Davis If it's time to party, it's time for hip hop. I love Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye. If I'm chilling at home though, I'm listening to Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Radiohead, DJ Shadow. I also listen to a lot of classical. Alexis Knapp Indulging in unrestrained and immoderate laughter is a sign of intemperance, of a want of control over one's emotions, and of...

What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing

one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person. Rick Santorum We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not. Michael Bloomberg Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know. Leslie Fiedler If you ask me why I've succeeded, it's because I was in the Royal Marines. You have this unbelievable sense of achievement and of overcoming adversity. That's the confidence it breeds. Brian McDermott I don't really plan to be a pop star; I just want to be able to make music without the wh...

I just banged it a little bit on a helmet. And you know, if you

get your throwing motion and momentum going at a helmet it makes it hurt a little more and it freaks everybody out because it's your throwing shoulder, but honestly, it feels great. Mark Sanchez Life is a canvas of many strokes where shades from different palettes meet into a picture so concrete that some forget it is their own, so become framed themselves. Vanna Bonta It is time to end the western policy of malign neglect. It is in the interest of the whole world to help tackle the actual grievances in Palestine, Kashmir, and in central and southern Iraq, and to help the region out of its economic backwardness. James Buchan Phil has always been a fighter. He was getting in fights all the time. I told him that if he ever hit me then I would leave the band. He wanted to find out if I was telling him the truth. He hit me so I left and that is how UFO split up. Michael Schenker I just want to be with great teachers. If that means I'm in a horror film with good teachers...

The Western is as American as a film can get - there's the discovery of

a frontier, the element of a showdown, revenge, and determining the best gunman. There's a certain masculinity to the Western that really appealed to me, and I've always wanted to do a Western in Hollywood. Kim Jee-woon You have to captivate and entertain if you want your message to get across. Vince Staples They haven't given too many gamblers a second chances in the world of baseball. Pete Rose Although I don't examine myself in this respect, I would say, off the top of my head, that I've come to acknowledge my Czechness more as I get older. Tom Stoppard It's a heavy duty to try to do everything and please everybody. My job was to go out there and play the game of basketball as best I can and provide entertainment for everyone who wanted to watch basketball. Obviously, people may not agree with that; again, I can't live with what everyone's impression of what I should or what I shouldn't do. Michael Jordan Losing my daughter was a ve...

I think everyone starts in the mailroom at some point! It's a right of passage.

Your boss has to throw something at you and order you around for at least two years. Michael B. Jordan I wouldn't say my mother was my best friend, because that sounds odd, but we have a really tight bond and she is my friend on Facebook. Although she only goes on it to check up on me and sometimes we argue about it. Dionne Bromfield I like to get people talking. I am a provocateur, and I do like getting on Twitter and riling people up. You know what, after a while some sane dialogue and sane conclusions come of that kind of thing. Roseanne Barr They shaved my head, eyebrows. This is not a sci-fi picture. It's not a fantasy picture. You're dealing with something that's supposed to be in reality. But we had a genius makeup artist. Rick Yune So long as peace is not attained by law (so argue the advocates of armaments) the military protection of a country must not be undermined, and until such is the case disarmament is impossible. Ludwig Quidde I grew up, a...

There's nobody who loves being around actors working more than David Mamet, especially actors bringing

his tremendous dialogue to life. I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave. Clark Gregg You could say I'm a character actress. Or maybe a character actress who does peculiar, interesting lead roles. Imelda Staunton Broadband gives small businesses the opportunity to broaden their customer base and reduce their overheads through e-commerce platforms. Hamadoun Toure True security is based on people's welfare - on a thriving economy, on strong public health and education programmes, and on fundamental respect for our common humanity. Development, peace, disarmament, reconciliation and justice are not separate from security; they help to underpin it. Ban Ki-moon We have a company, Geometric Software, which is into engineering services software. We have a company called Nature's Basket, which is into gourmet retailing. Both are specialized companies. Adi Godrej I've been reading a lot of books on history, and watchi...