Would I show my body off if I was thinner? Probably not, because my body is mine. I think I remind everyone of themselves. I'm not saying everyone is my size, but it's relatable because I'm not perfect, and I think a lot of people are portrayed as perfect, unreachable and untouchable.
What ends up happening is people form images and the image they form is, in some ways, what they want it to be. The idea of trying to correct the image is something I'm not interested in doing.
Mama always said a good family has one heartbeat. No one knows you like the people you live with, and no one will take up your cause to the outside world quite like your blood relatives.
Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.
I vowed to our countrymen that I would do everything I could to protect the American people... That's why I said to Afghanistan: If you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist.
We are reminded that, in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame, but rather how well we have loved and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.
There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.
I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they're just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time.
Dissenting opinions are useful even when they're wrong. So instead of speaking to highly agreeable audiences, target suggestions to people with a history of originality.
Ten percent of people can think, another ten percent of people think that they think, and eighty percent of people would rather die than be made to think.
As you get older, your mind gets a little more set. And it needs the poking and prodding and breaking through of stereotypes that I think young people provide.
People once considered that religions were obsolete and that material science would solve all human problems. Then they have become disillusioned with materialism and machinery and have realized that spiritual sciences are also indispensable for human welfare.
After 9/11, the amount of applicants the FBI received increased exponentially. Whereas you used to require a college degree, and it was a small group of people who were just out of college, after 9/11, it changed.
If we are going to make the change from community to communitas, and not just end up with an unsustainable adrenaline-junkie culture, we must have a sophisticated process to form people into adventurer-disciples.
It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.