You can't be afraid of hard work or long hours. Sacrifice is important.
Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or subpoena.
Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character.
Talk about the flag or drugs or crime (never about race or class or justice) and follow the yellow brick road to the wonderful land of consensus. In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children: the pretense that conflict doesn't really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics.
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.
The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves. . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.
Jesus said, 'Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. ' There are no exceptions. Baptism is a necessary ordinance.
My sense is that file sharing started in predominantly white, middle- and upper-middle-cl ass young people who were native-born, who felt they were entitled to have something for free, because that's what they were used to.
I feel sorry for people in power. I feel sorry for the Queen, in a way, that she hasn't had a normal life. It'd difficult for me to hate anyone. Immediately someone's unpopular, I feel sorry for them.
I used to focus more on scoring. Now I take a lot of pride and pleasure in helping someone else do well.