The tortoise moves very slowly, it moves towards whatever the goal is, to keep a democratic capitalistic society functioning.
A century is about events. A decade is about people.
The great presidents never forget the principle of the republic and seek to preserve and enhance them – in the long run– without undermining the needs of the moment. Bad presidents simply do what is expedient, heedless of principles. But the worst presidents are those who adhere to the principles regardless of what the fortunes of the moment demand.
The kind of president we need has little to do with ideology and more to do with a willingness to wield power to moral ends.
When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.
When you're young and going to war, it's a genuinely exciting moment. You are going to risk yourself. On the battlefield, you are suddenly free. You realize: I'm here, I'm in it. Exaltation. Suddenly you're hit by another extraordinary feeling: my God, I can be killed. And: will I embarrass myself? It's like you're in a kaleidoscope and all of these extraordinary feelings are zipping by.
I cannot understand how something as ubiquitous as war can simply be dismissed as pathological. It is not clear to me that it is an unspeakable evil. If it is, I need proof of it.
Our schools offer no conception of the scientific process of discovery. They do not encourage creative thought, in fact, they stifle it through too much rigidity in teaching. If we set out to give as little help as possible to originality in science, we could hardly devise a better plan than our education system. Youngsters ought to be told what is unknown about ourselves and our universe as well as what is known.
On film you put all your energies into a single glance.
I saw 'Alien' when I was 8 years old. To me, it was like a combination of Jaws and Star Wars, and that's the movie that made me want to be a director.
There's nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you're not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I'm the worst. I'm the worst at that.