I took some time off to enjoy my life, but figure skating is something I love and something I will continue doing for the rest of my life.
We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything.
When you're 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you're 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you're 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place. You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.
If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain.
Deep Listening Institute is dissolving and is now the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). The legacy of the twenty or thirty years that we've been operating is now transferred to RPI.
I opposed the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I read the book and took a critical distance. I did not think The Satanic Verses is a blasphemous book. I did not consider the book as being a great read, but as an intellectual I read, I assess, and I respond. I make a difference between true freedom of expression to which we owe a response and provocation, which we ignore.
You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful.
I think that's what keeps you grounded - having your own life that's not directed by your job.