People from Montana

"It never struck me as interesting that I didn't go to school — we had our own little world. I always thought of kids who were going to regular school as if they're the others, the separate ones."

"To search and seek among the outer bounds, And when we land upon a distant shore, To seek another yet farther still."

"The songs of the dead are the lamentations of the living."

"When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it."

"No-one can function properly without occasional peace and quiet."

"So tell me, is it true that men have ten toes, as is said?"

"Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now."

"Shall we dance, friend of my heart?"

"Applied properly, it [logic] can overcome any lack of wisdom, which one only gains through age and experience."

"Those whom we love are often the most alien to us."

"Characters are born from necessity."

"My father's work will not go unfinished, even if it takes me to the grave. That is what I want you, as a rider, to understand. All of Ajihad's plans, all his strategies and goals, they are mine now. I will not fail him by being weak. The empire will be brought down, Galbatorix will with dethroned, and the rightful government will be raised."

"It seems a cold world without something … more." "On the contrary," said Oromis, "it is a better world . A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won't tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else's notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will."

"Well, I suppose I won't see you for a while. So farewell, good luck, avoid roasted cabbage, don't eat ear wax, and look on the bright side of life!"

"You must learn to see what you are looking at."

"‘You cheated.’ ‘No, I exploited a weakness in my opponent. There is a difference.’"

"‘I don’t know how else to teach you what you need to learn except by showing you your mistakes over and over again until you stop making them.’"

"‘It’s impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.’"

"Death, he had come to believe, was a corrosive thing, and the more he was around it, the more it gnawed away at who he was."

"‘You of all people should know that everything in this world must be paid for, whether in gold, time, or blood.’"

"“I am the victor. In the end nothing else matters.’"

"‘I cannot forgive, but I understand.’"

"‘I am not who I was, but I know who I am.’"

"‘Then I guess we have no choice but to go forward. When have we ever had any choice but to go forward?’"

"Better to die than to live in fear."

"War was a catalog of madness."

"Change is neither good nor bad, but knowledge is always useful."

"‘I am not ready. But when will we ever be ready?’"

"‘Fight if you wish. Deny what is before you if it comforts you. But nothing you do can change your fate.’"

"‘When you teach them—teach them not to fear. Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant, pounding companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what is right.’"

"I've never said, 'I have diabetes, so I can’t bust my ass on this play.'"

"My mustache speaks to me... it says, 'Together, we will return the NBA to the glory of its mustache days. Pistol Pete, Kurt Rambis and Clyde Frazier.' And in the offseason, my mustache and I will drive around in a muscle car solving mysteries. Times will be good. My mustache is very wise."

"A little bit of both. 'Decembrist' is the accepted English translation of the Russian 'Dekabristy.' We appropriated it by adding the extra E, which, in my opinion, made it a better band name. For whatever reason."

"Well, I think it is accidental. It’s just something I started doing naturally and it had a lot to do with reading. I think that Dylan Thomas, his prose and poetry, was a big influence on me. Just his use of words… He would use so many odd words: like these three- and four-syllable words that you just don’t normally hear. And they’re not used in a manner that sets the text apart from the reader. Rather they’re drawing the reader in. It’s entirely based on the alliteration of the word itself—onomatopoeia and things like that. I feel like a lot of the words I use don’t stick out in the song because they keep the feel of the song in mind. The rhythm—that’s the primary thing. They’re put in there for rhythm and alliteration as much as they are for meaning. And as long as they are not used extraneously, they’re real lightning rods for people listening to the lyrics. If the words are really helping out the rhythm of the song then all they’re going to do is draw the listener in even more"

"Well, I think you just have to be prepared to be weirder and weirder. I follow the example of Robyn Hitchcock who, I think, has created a career out of this world he has constructed. It’s very much his world, and he continually builds upon it. I think he’s received criticism in the past along the lines of, “Oh, here’s another Robyn Hitchcock record about flesh and fish,” and things like that, but in fact if you really look at the songs, they’re just the building blocks for this very complex, very vibrant, and very real world that exists within his songwriting. So I look to him for inspiration."

"All instruments sound fantastic in a church."

"My mother was a Chinese trapeze artist in pre-war Paris Smuggling bombs for the underground. And she met my father at a fete in Aix-en-Provence; He was disguised as a Russian cadet in the employ of the Axis."

"Find him, bind him, tie him to a pole and break his fingers to splinters, Drag him to a hole until he wakes up naked Clawing at the ceiling of his grave."

"[The Decemberists] generally manage to encompass the Stones, XTC, Morrissey and me without sounding like any of them. It takes a boy from Montana to be that British."

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new; an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook". But I realize — only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."

"No capes!!!"

"The Iron Giant (1999)"

"The Incredibles (2004)"

"Ratatouille (2007)"

"Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)"

"Tomorrowland (2015)"

"Incredibles 2 (2018)"

"Batteries Not Included (1987)"

"Without question, our public lands are America’s treasure and are rich in diversity. I fully recognize and appreciate that there are lands that deserve special recognition and are better managed under the John Muir model of wilderness, where man is more of an observer than an active participant."

"During the recent centennial of our National Park Service, I found myself at the ceremony at Yellowstone National Park, our first National Park established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. As I enjoyed the celebration under the famous Roosevelt arch, I could not help but notice the words etched in the stone at the top of the arch “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” And, on the side of the right pillar was a plaque with the words “Created by Act of Congress.” I thought “What a perfect symbol’ of what our land policy in a Nation as great as ours should be."

"I'm a geologist, and I don't consider myself a genius, but I'm a pretty smart guy."

"And I have to say, really, talk about a very special guy that I made Secretary of the Interior. Does he know the interior — he knows it, he loves it. He loves seeing it and riding on it."

"Ryan Zinke is not, in fact, a geologist. He has never been a geologist. What he did is major in geology in college, which does not make you a geologist. All it does is qualify you to watch the movie San Andreas and whisper to your friend, "It wouldn't happen like that.""

"Do what you can do, as well as you can do it, every day of your life, and you will end up dying one of the happiest individuals that have ever died."

"I compared meat to tobacco as a killer, but to be fair, in one way alone tobacco outshines meat as an evil: it is physically addictive. As we all know, tobacco companies have a history of trying to target their ads to teenagers in the frequently fulfilled hope that these young people will be in their thrall for the rest of their lives. Meat, by contrast, is in no way physically addictive. Eating it is merely a habit, one that people are socially conditioned to believe is normal, even healthy. Whether you choose to phase meat out of your diet slowly, over time, or to stop on a dime and become a vegetarian overnight, you won't suffer any real symptoms of “withdrawal.” But you probably will feel more energy, and enjoy a longer and healthier life."

"And suddenly the circle came together for me. We were as a civilization making one big mistake, a mistake that was understandable because we had been raised to make it. We had been culturally indoctrinated to believe it to be not a mistake at all, but rather a normal and healthy habit. But this mistake was killing us as individuals just as it was destroying our land and our forests and our rivers. We were eating dead animals, and it wasn't working. If those animals had set out to take their revenge on us, they couldn't have done a better job."

"Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to go away. Not only did I feel better physically, but I felt better knowing that there was one answer to many of the different ills afflicting both ourselves and our environment. Everything revolved around the fork."

"Humanity is rich in folly, but it's hard to think of a folly more mind-bogglingly stupendous than that of transforming infinitely rich, diverse, dense jungle into desert in a few years' time for the sake of a few more hamburgers."

"The question we must ask ourselves as a culture is whether we want to embrace the change that must come, or resist it. Are we so attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to counter the arbitrary laws of eating taught to us in childhood by our misinformed parents, that we cannot alter the course they set us on, even if it leads to our own ruin? Does the prospect of standing apart or encountering ridicule scare us even from saving ourselves?"

"is not a natural condition that we should expect to “grow into” at any age. Like heart disease, dementia has acquired a patina of normalcy only because so many of those around us succumb to it. But I believe that, like heart disease, it is a distinctly abnormal condition brought about by an abnormal diet."

"To state the obvious: vegetarians live longer than meat eaters simply and solely because we do not consume the filthy, fatty, disease-ridden, decaying flesh of animals."

"Vegetarians and vegans are not morally superior to everyone else. We're simply healthier, and a hell of a lot better for the environment around us. Of course, just because we're not morally superior doesn't mean we're not on the side of the angels. I believe we are. After all, we're practitioners of a diet that's better for people, better for animals, and better for the environment."

"For those who are still merely vegetarian and not yet vegan, I ask, what in heaven's name are you waiting for? If you are trying to avoid the health pitfalls of eating carcasses—high fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol content; lack of fiber; deficiency of vitamins and enzymes; abundance of stored toxins—well, then take a good look at the dairy you're eating. Dairy is basically liquid meat without the iron. … Milk should be viewed as no more or less than what it is: a delivery system for fat, cholesterol, blood, pus, antibiotics, and carcinogenic growth hormones. … If your reason for abstaining from meat has more to do with an emotional attachment to animals than a concern for your health, then understand that dairy cows are truly sick, miserable, abused creatures … Someone who has become vegetarian for emotional reasons ought to switch to the vegan diet as swiftly and surely as someone brought to vegetarianism for reasons of health."

"The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. Infamous criminals act out the aggressions of timid conformists. Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators. People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash. Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of justice gets headlines."

"Creativity is difficult. When you are being creative, you’re living by faith. You don’t know what’s next because the created, by definition, is what’s never been before. So you’re living at the edge of something in which you’re not very confident. You might fail: in fact, you almost certainly will fail a good part of the time. All the creative persons I know throw away most of the stuff they do."

"Our own definition of childhood schizophrenia has been a clinical entity, occurring in childhood before the age of eleven years, which "reveals pathology in behavior at every level and in every area of integration or patterning within the functioning of the central nervous system, be it vegetative, motor, perceptual, intellectual, emotional, or social. Further more, this behavior pathology disturbs the patterns of every functioning field in a characteristic way. The pathology cannot therefore be thought of as a focal in the architecture of the central nervous system, but rather as striking at the substratum of integrative functioning or biologically patterned behavior" (1) At present the only concept we have of this pathology is in terms of field forces in which temporal rather than spatial factors are emphasized. Within the concept of field forces, one can accept some idea of a focal disorder, since no one integrated function is ever completely lost or inhibited, and since there are different degrees of severity of disturbance in the life history of any child and between two different children. This also differs with the period of onset. The diagnostic criteria for the 100 schizophrenic children which make up this study have been rigid. In each child it has been possible to demonstrate characteristic disturbances in every patterned functioning field of behavior. Every schizophrenic child reacts to the psychosis in a way determined by his own total personality including the infantile experiences and the level of maturation of the personality. This reaction is usually a neurotic one determined by the anxiety stirred up by the disturbing phenomena in the vaso-vegetative, motility, perceptual, and psychological fields. Interferences in normal developmental patterns and regressive phenomena with resulting primitive reactions are related to both the essential psychosis and the reaction of the anxiety-ridden personality. There are, of course, children in whom the differential diagnosis is very difficult. Those with some form of diffuse encephalopathy or diffuse developmental deviations in which the normally strong urges for normal development push the child into frustration and reactive anxiety may present many schizophrenic features in the motility disturbances, intellectual interferences, and psychological reactions."

"This group of boys showed considerable: and consistent effects from medication with UML or LSD daily for two to eleven months. Their behavior, ward management, school-room adjustment and progress at home changed favorably with less acting out and less disturbed behavior. They not only needed no other tranquilizing, sedative, or antidepressant medication, but furthermore, unlike the tranquilizers which made them sleepy and groggy, they were generally cheerful and alert. Personnel and families noted the difference. Repeated psychiatric interviews revealed a change in fantasy material which was less bizarre, personalized or disturbing. Depressive, anxious and paranoid attitudes were focused on real objective problems. Insight was impressive. Intellectual changes, as seen in psychometric tests, indicated improved maturity, better organization and motivation with a rise in IQ which was reflected in improved school work. The Rorschach and drawing tests also showed increased maturity and control with clearer thinking."

"It was hoped that these drugs might prove effective in breaking through autistic defenses, improving autonomic nervous system functioning, and modifying distorted perceptual experiences. There were some differences in results in the various groups. In general, the younger autistic children became less anxious, less autistic and plastic, more aware and responsive, with some changes in verbalization and qualitative improvement, on the Vineland Social Maturity Scale. The girls and older autistic boys showed similar results, but much less marked and persistent. Verbal children showed improvement in general behavior, with marked changes in fantasy and bizarre ideation to more insightful, reality-oriented, though often anxious and depressive attitudes, and improved maturity and organization. There were no major side effects, though a few patients on UML had muscular spasms and vasomotor changes in the legs, generally of a temporary nature. It is significant to note that while most of these patients had required tranquilizing or, other medications, they could all now be maintained only on the LSD or UML. A few patients received reserpine to control excessive activity, aggression, or biting."

"We do not use it as a psychoanalytic tool. Our idea was to give it as a daily drug. It is our general experience that frequently the children respond to many drugs that affect the central nervous system differently than adults. This is common knowledge; at least, to those of us using drugs with children. So we were not surprised to find, in our early initial studies, that if the children were near puberty or in puberty they responded to the first dose with anxiety and disturbance, just as the adolescent boys did. But even these children could be maintained on high doses of the drug, just as the adolescent boys were, so that the drugs can be given to these children in continuing doses. What tolerance means, I don't know. Tolerance may be established in our patients. The chemical studies suggest this, and even our psychological studies indicate a slight change later on, a leveling off of response as compared to initial reaction, but the long-term reaction is still the most valuable reaction to the drug."

"We then gave LSD in the same doses to non-autistic schizophrenic boys 6 to 12 years of age. They were intelligent and verbal and could be tested psychologically and in psychiatric interviews (Bender et al., 1963). They were selected because they had typical schizophrenic psychosis, with flying fantasies and identification and body image difficulties, loose ego boundaries, introjected objects and voices and bizarre ideologies. They had obvious anxiety and labile vaso-vegetative functions. After administering LSD to these children we found results contrary to those reported in adults. These children became more insightful, more objective, more realistic; and in a short time they became frankly depressed for reality reasons. They noted they were in the hospital, that they were away from their family, and that they had had "crazy" ideas before."

"My God, how can you stand such things, children? They say, "Mom, don't you know it is only television, it is not real.""

"There's no such thing as a normal child."

"Superman represents an instinctive problem that we are all born and grown up with, that we can fly ─ after all, we can fly now; we couldn't before ─ and that we can carry on all kinds of scientific investigations, that we can stop crime, which Superman does, and that we can have a good influence on the world, and that we can be protected by the powerful influences in the world which may be our own parents, or may be the authorities, or what not."

"So I advised them that in my experience children throughout the ages, long before Superman existed, tried, to fly, and also it has been my specific experience, since I have been at Bellevue Hospital, that certain children with certain emotional problems are particularly preoccupied with the problem of flying, both fascinated by it, and fearful of it. And we frequently have on our ward at Bellevue the problem of making Superman capes in occupational therapy and then the children wearing them and fighting over them and one thing or another ─ and only about 3 months ago we had such, what we call epidemic, and a number of children were hurt because they tried to fly off the top of radiators or off the top of bookcases or what not and got bumps."

"There is another reason why Superman has had good influence. That is the years of continuity of the Superman character. The children know that Superman will always come out on the right side. On that, I can give you another story about what they wanted to do. At the end of the Second World War we had the problem of a certain number of soldiers coming home as amputees. One of the script writers got the bright idea that we ought to prepare children for their fathers coming home as amputees by having one of the characters─ I don’t think it was Superman ─ one of the others ─ have an accident and lose his leg. They wanted to know what I thought about that idea. I said I thought it was absolutely terrible because I felt that the children loved this character and, after all, how many children were going to have to face the question of an amputee father? Certainly there are far better ways of preparing such children for such a father than to have to shock the whole comic reading children public. So I disapproved of it."

"They said, "This is good because it is history. This is real," which is another reason why it is bad. They also gave a picture of colonial days where the mother was being tommyhawked by the Indians, with a baby at her breast, and the baby was being dropped on the ground. Now, this was history. Certainly it is history, but do our children today have to be exposed to such things? This is not history. I see no excuse whatsoever for a parent magazine group or an approved group approving that sort of thing. It was quite contrary to the code which we eventually established for the comic people."

"Mr. BEASER Since delinquency does appear in broken homes as well as others, assuming this is a broken home and they depicted a broken home, would the child identify his own mother and father with the pictures in the comic book?"

"Now, I can well imagine children, and I know plenty of disturbed children from homes where they have less support than my children do, because, after all, my children have not only had the support of myself, but of our very many friends, who on occasions of these various things and, after all, there are lots of children in the world whose fathers have been killed by gangsters or who don't know who their fathers are, and who live in a gangster's world and whose fathers are gangsters killing other people ─ I don't know that crime is quite as bad in the world as we try to make it out to be, and these children I am sure will be disturbed by such things. If they have to be exposed to them, or are exposed to them, they should have a wise adult who can discuss the matters with them and talk it over with them."

"Mr. BEASER: Now, let me ask you one final question, Doctor. Would you say ─ I suppose you would ─ that your opinion on this subject is in no way in influenced by the fact that you are member of the Superman comics advisory board?"

"She does not believe that Wonder Woman tends to masochism or sadism. Furthermore, she believes that even if it did-you can teach either perversion to children-one can only bring out what is inherent in the child. However she did make the reservation that if the woman slaves wore chains (and enjoyed them) for no purpose whatsoever, there would be no point in chaining them."

"Dr. Bender was known for developing, in 1923, the Bender-Gestault Visual Motor Test, a neuropsychological examination that has become a worldwide standard. She spent many years researching the cause of childhood schizophrenia and was responsible for studies on child suicides and violence."

"With regard to the purpose of these studies, all were to some extent exploring the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs rather than their psychotomimetic properties. This was least true of Freedman and his coworkers (1962) who viewed LSD primarily as a means of studying the schizophrenic process by "intensifying pre-existing symptomology." This orientation contrasted sharply with Bender's view. Noting that withdrawn children became more emotionally responsive while aggressive children became less so, she hypothesized that psychedelic drugs "tend to 'normalize' behavior rather than subdue or stimulate it." This basic difference in expectations seems at least partially responsible for Bender's extremely favorable outcomes and Freedman's rather poor results. Regarding all forms of psychotherapy, it has become a truism that " where there is no therapeutic intent, there is no therapeutic result" (Charles Savage in Abramson, 1960, p. 193)."

"Consistent with their explicit therapeutic intent, Bender, Fisher, and Simmons each offer essentially the same hypothesis based on a psychological interpretation of childhood schizophrenia: " The working hypothesis of this study is that the psychosis is a massive defensive structure in the service of protecting and defending the patient against his feelings and affectual states" (Fisher & Castile, 1963). Psychedelic drugs were viewed as a powerful means of undermining an intractable defense system and thereby making the patient more receptive to contact and communication with others."

"Cruelty walked the Warrens holding hands with poverty and rage."

"“What do you want? Why am I here?” Rat asked. “Ah, petulance and philosophy all bound up in one.”"

"It wouldn’t be the first time his sharp tongue had cut his own throat."

"You aren’t making art, you’re making corpses. Dead is dead."

"A solicitor is a man who does worse things within the law than most crooks do outside it."

"You’re either being terrifically subtle or making no sense at all."

"Hope is the lies we tell ourselves about the future."

"It may be beyond your comprehension, but I can hold power without using it."

"See, you get caught up in the past and you become useless to the present."

"Agon wondered what god Cenaria had offended to deserve such a king."

"So he wasn’t dead. That was probably supposed to be a good thing."

"“That pain you feel,” Master Blint said almost gently, “is the pain of abandoning a delusion. The delusion is meaning, Kylar. There is no higher purpose. There are no gods. No arbiters of right and wrong. I don’t ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this."

"I’m trying to do what’s right, whether or not that measures up with what men call honorable. There’s a gap between those, you know?"

"Kylar woke two hours before dawn and briefly wondered if death would be too high a price to pay for a full night’s sleep."

"They’re schemers, so they see schemes."

"Like many who have no reason for pride, that very lack of reason for it made me the prouder. But certain realities have a way of making themselves felt, and debt is one of them."

"“Here I thought they were invincible.” “They’re immortal. It’s not the same thing.”"

"“I used to believe a lot of things. That doesn’t make them true,” Durzo said."

"Its limbs were loose, graceless, lying in an uncomfortable position. Unmoving. Just like any corpse. In life, every man was unique. In death every man was meat."

"[The Gospel of Mary is an] intriguing glimpse into a kind of Christianity lost for almost fifteen hundred years...[it] presents a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings as a path to inner spiritual knowledge; it rejects His suffering and death as the path to eternal life; it exposes the erroneous view that Mary of Magdala was a prostitute for what it is—a piece of theological fiction; it presents the most straightforward and convincing argument in any early Christian writing for the legitimacy of women's leadership; it offers a sharp critique of illegitimate power and a utopian vision of spiritual perfection; it challenges our rather romantic views about the harmony and unanimity of the first Christians; and it asks us to rethink the basis for church authority. All written in the name of a woman."

"Modern scholars understood Gnosticism to be a particular kind of heresy. They have generally divided the earliest varieties of Christianity into three categories: Jewish Christianity, Gnosticism, and orthodoxy. The first appropriated too much Judaism and took too positive an attitude toward it; the second appropriated too little and took too negative an attitude. ... Orthodoxy was just right, sailing between this Scylla and Charybdis, appropriately safe from both dangers."

"We may be the first generation that instead of sacrificing for our kids, we’re sacrificing their future with an inheritance of debt."

"We've seen what Big Government looks like. No one would have thought that the IRS would turn against the American people, and yet here we are. We must always be vigilant and guarded against the overreach of power."

"I’m grateful that I have faith that provides perspective. This is important work, but I always have to remember that there is even a higher calling: serving God. We serve our country, but ultimately I serve God in what I do day to day. It would be difficult to serve here without being grounded in faith."

"I know Colorado to be a beautiful land of beautiful people and I look forward to serving the faithful of Pueblo as their shepherd in Christ. I eagerly anticipate our future together as we grow and build our local church."

"We should admit some of the ineffective practices of our past labors. This confrontation needs be embraced by all of us on a personal level, at the local parish and throughout the diocese. There are many ways in which we can do this and now move forward. The mission of Christ is being strengthened."

"The people working at the White House at the time are friends of mine, and they're friends of mine to this day. I don’t want to trivialize how difficult their decisions were. They did not have good choices."

"Correlation is not causation, as we like to say here at Stanford, and the fact that I arrived in the middle of that had to do with our long confirmation process in America. Nothing to do with Russian politics. But in Russia, that was not the way it was portrayed. In Russia, it was portrayed that I was sent deliberately by President Obama to lead the revolution. And given my background as an academic, I've written about the political transitions and democratization, that was a very easy story."

"I'm 100 percent for lifting sanctions on Russia, provided they change their behavior for why the sanctions were put in place. It’s just that simple."

"It’s incumbent upon all people to believe in the facts and to keep pushing it. You can’t constrain free speech, but you can speak more loudly about what is factual."

"I hope that from crisis and tragedy comes engagement. Don’t just complain about [an issue], do something about it! Don’t just lament about the current state of affairs, vote!"

"We're not good at point predictions. But we are pretty good at some long-term trajectory things, over hundreds of years, right? Over hundreds of years, there's a pretty strong correlation between the more well-to-do a society is, the more educated it is, the more urban it is, the more income GDP per capita, the more likely there is to be demand for democracy."

"We got to get our democracy in order at home, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Two wrongs do not make a right."

"In rhetorical terms and broad strokes, in terms of ambition, I think the Biden administration has a fundamentally different approach to Putin than Trump did. I’m using my words very precisely — the Trump administration had a policy towards Russia, but Trump himself had a much more friendly relationship with Putin. There is little gap between President Biden and the Biden administration on that front."

"There is a big academic literature on under what conditions sanctions work and don’t work, on when they can change the behavior of targeted countries. And most times, they don’t work. That’s what the literature says."

"If both China and Russia were liberal democracies, I don’t think we would be having conversations about great power competition. So I believe that regime type does matter, and the ideological dimension that comes with that regime type also plays a role in great power competition."

"Today, however, Russia and China are united as autocracies. They do have this ideological connection. Both countries have tense relations with the United States and the liberal democratic world, and that brings them together."

"The last thing I would say is to remind people that there are some things that are very different in this era compared to the Cold War. We should just take them as being different and not shoehorn them into some Cold War battle. I think this is particularly true with China, because we are so much more integrated with the Chinese economy, with Chinese society, even with Chinese students — I assume you have as many Chinese students at Yale as we do here at Stanford. Those are dimensions of great power engagement that we didn’t have during the Cold War. Rather than thinking of them always as threats and feeling the need to disengage and untangle our partnerships, I hope that smart leaders — and it’s your generation that will have to do this, not mine — will think of those as potential assets for American power and American society."

"I speak in general. I think that Putin does not understand that criticizing power can help this power. How do we fight corruption in the United States? There are two forces - independent media and powerful opposition party."

"I guess my preliminary take away is that China is running a brilliant foreign policy right now. They have convinced the Russians that they have a strategic relationship when in fact the most important bilateral relationship for them is with us, and that’s smart; that’s good diplomacy. I don’t know what will happen in the long run, but I think that’s a great position to be in. They fully understand that the management and deepening of their relationship with US is way more important than any other bilateral relationship, including with Russia. Just because trade levels, for economic and security reasons, the bilateral relationship is the most important for them. Russia is peripheral in that respect. Having said that, maintaining good relations with many countries is in the Chinese interest, and that’s what they’re doing."

"As Speaker of the House, it was my goal to uphold the integrity of the House. As a leader in my caucus it was my goal to foster unity not conformity. We can be united behind the primary ideals of our party without losing individuality. It has been an honor to be selected by my peers to fill this roll."

"Big breath, chest up!"

"Hit it hard, and wish it well."

"Brass playing is no harder than deep breathing."

"Watch the tongue."

"The air does the work. The tongue channels the pitch."

"Let the air save your lip."

"Let the air do the work."

"Rest as much as you play."

"Lift fingers high, strike valves hard."

"Don't stop where I have, but go further."

"You could have a lip strong enough to lift that piano and still not be able to play a low C!"

"With God there is always more! There is always room for more, and we have work to do. There is always room for those we have not yet invited inside and those not yet born. It is from this holy place that we are sent out into the world to be Christ to and for one another, Christ to the whole world. That is our mission; that is our identity."

"It is only when one ascends the mountains that the grand panorama is unfolded, and the book of nature is spread out, as it were, where an invitation is extended to all who will read."

"Scattered in the wind Earthboy calls me from my dreams: Dirt is where the dreams must end."

"(Do you remember the first Native writers you read?) LE: Yes. James Welch's Winter in the Blood came out in 1972...Winter in the Blood blew me away. That book told me about myself and my life. The portrait of his grandmother was unforgettable. I could never forget his description of her hands. Like the claws of a tiny crow. The writing was spare, bleak, comical. My world."

"I took to James Welch's poetry and novels to find the wryest of humor to counter dread and loss."