Generations

The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary.

He'll always be my baby. My wealth-obsessed baby.

Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom when Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote. We were enlarged by tears of pride as we saw Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.

Financial independence is a great thing, but you can’t take your paycheck to bed with you. And there’s nothing empowering about being beholden to an employer when what you really want is to have a baby. That’s dependency of a different sort.

Odd how often blood is shed to obtain freedom from those in power. Oppressors must be the most insecure people in the world.

The Internet is disrupting every media industry…people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.

I saw how the university life goes, both in Europe and then in the US…and I was just aghast, because everyone was what I call drillers of deeper wells. These academics sit at the bottom of a deep well and they look up and see a sliver of the sky. They know everything about that little sliver of sky, and nothing else. I scan all my horizons.

I found [President Obama] to be someone with very polite and smart language. The problems with the US are very complicated ... but, despite the complexities, there has been an opening over the past 100 days which can later widen.

Even if many women in Egypt had discovered suddenly during the revolution that they had a voice and they could express what they wanted, they now are back in the family and in the kitchen, and this is where they are told they should be. And this is very grim.

Obviously [my daughters] - and Michelle - have made a lot of sacrifices on behalf of my cockamamie ideas, the running for office and things.

Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear program. As President and Commander in Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict. Today, we have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it.

Dr. [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] had many other goals - many other more transcendent, non-racial, policy goals. Goals that apply to white people too. Like ending poverty, reducing the war aspects of our foreign policy, promoting the New Deal goal of universal employment, and so on. But his main accomplishment was ending 200
years of racial terrorism by getting black people to confront their fears... That is what Dr. King did. Not march, not give good speeches. He crisscrossed the south organizing people, helping them not be afraid, and encouraging them - like Gandhi did in India - to take the beating that they had been trying to avoid all their lives. Once the beating was over, we were free.