Were Quotes

I wanted to create jobs and create something that had a very longstanding world-changing effect. We were close. We were close to getting there. It just fell apart.

We weren't put here to be miserable. We were put here to do the best we can, and we should take our energy and improve our state of being.

There'll be moments when I'm out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I'll remember if I were actually an inmate, I'd only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I'd be in my cell. It's kind of a downer.

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.

I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older.

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

They think that, if we were just smart enough, we'd be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell 'em, and I do tell 'em, Oh, we're plenty smart, oh yeah - we know what's goin' on. And we don't like what's goin' on. And we're not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.

No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing.

Our two party platforms were emphatic about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel. For the Obama administration to remove this language from the Democratic Party platform drives a wedge into one of the few issues that our two parties agreed on.

When I began making my own albums, the songs became funkier. They were more about the streets.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.

I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

All we can hope for is that the thing is going to slowly and imperceptibly shift. All I can say is that 50 years ago there were no such thing as environmental policies.

Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

I was fortunate enough to work under directors who were, most of them, brilliant, emotional men.

It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

Man, I just feel blessed... I was in a situation where the only way I could come out of it was by putting my faith in God. No matter how good my lawyers were, no matter how much celebrity I had, everything was just stacked up against me.

Lawyers didn't seriously get involved in the Watergate stories until quite late, when we realized we were on to something.

He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?

I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.

When I became White House press secretary, there were other limitations that were thrust upon me. Bill Clinton was under pressure to appoint women to visible positions. I was 31, I'd never worked in Washington. Was I ready for this large and visible job? Still he wanted the credit. So he gave me the job but diminished the job.

I'm the biggest nerd - I love comic books and stuff like that! I don't have any friends who are actresses. I only had one girlfriend when I was growing up. Most of my friends were boys. I was such a tomboy. I enjoyed doing guy things.

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.