Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use - which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing - for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.
In each of us, there is a little voice that knows exactly which way to go. And I learned very early to listen to it, even though it has caused so much grief and havoc, and I think that is the only answer.
I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.
We become forgetful of the ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others - the body with which most complacently we identify the ego.
I think the best thing I can hope to achieve is to educate, or make aware, as many people as possible on how the little things they do every day really do affect our environment.
I do think that there is a big difference between family farms and agri-business, and one of the distressing things that I think has occurred is with consolidation of farm lands. You've seen large agri-businesses benefit from enormous profits from existing farm programs, and I think we should be focusing most of those programs on those family farmers.
It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble.
I certainly know that if the war fails, the administration fails, and that I will be blamed for it, whether I deserve it or not. And I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.
I would have I think made a bigger mistake if I had said, "Eh, chemical weapons. That doesn't really change my calculus." I think it was important for me as president of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons [in Syria].
No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul.
Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.
I do consider myself an actress now. I think Dig and Transparent have given me the confidence. I've been working as an actress, it's something that I have to continue to earn, but I do feel like it's a part of me. It's something that I love, and to not acknowledge it would be false.