Ma Jian Quotes
On the face of it, China has won the Olympics. But it is not China that has won, but the Communist party. The Chinese people have lost.
Quotes to Explore
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I've had the good fortune of studying the 17th-century art of Amsterdam in preparation for a film.
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I am genuinely into soul, R&B and hip hop - all these genres that get slapped under the 'soul' genre. That spoke to me more than it did to my punk-rock friends. And punk spoke more to me than it did to my soul friends. I basically didn't fit comfortably in either world.
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I love work where I can find out more about the world and its history.
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Whatever people thought the first time they held a portable phone the size of a shoe in their hands, it was nothing like where we are now, accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips.
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Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons.
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For some reason, I just lack that ability to be embarrassed about going up to people. I even do it for friends if they want to ask someone out.
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You can't say what the outcome of a competition is going to be, so now I am ready to accept any result that comes my way, if I give my best shot.
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The Arab spring that began in 2010 was driven by the educated youth who were connected to the outside world. They had visions of liberal politics derived from social networks. They used innovative means to spread awareness and to network among activists.
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The mid-day meal is a well-intentioned scheme and has to be implemented effectively.
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It is no surprise that companies do not often respond to moral pressure alone. We need to hit them hard in their pocketbook and on their balance sheet. We need to show them that their stock prices will be affected if their actions encourage Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions.
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Here at this site, Solyndra expects to make enough solar panels each year to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. And over the lifetime of this expanded facility, that could be like replacing as many as eight coal-fired power plants.
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One knows less about one's own destiny than about anything else on earth.
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Here's the thing that people don't understand: I don't really care. I've never been a careerist. It's not a strategy. I react to certain characters and story lines and specific mode of filmmaking.
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Sometimes I still go round the house making weird noises and stuff, so in that aspect, I haven't grown up!
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In 1989, I was on Tiananmen Square with the students, living in their makeshift tents and joining their jubilant singing of the Internationale. In the two decades since, each time that I have gone back, visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence.
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That was one of the best, exciting things for me to play with them. They were very young and eager to go. I'd been playing with a band that was mostly old folks that had been together so long we couldn't do anything to excite each other.
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The room-service Caesar salads with soggy croutons, the distant relatives who show up at readings pitching weird, far-fetched investment schemes, the fans who have you sign a book to 'Cathy' and then tell you, 'No, it's Kathy with a K' - it gets challenging after a while. It tests your stamina.
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Is your remarkably sexist drivel intentional, or just some horrible mistake?
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I learned not to depend on other people. I needed support, but it's you who has to go out and deliver.
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Food production has affected the environment more than any other activity humans have engaged in. Humanity devotes more land to food production than anything else - roughly a third of the surface area of the earth, much of which was once forest but has been converted by humans into farms or grazing lands.
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The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.
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On the face of it, China has won the Olympics. But it is not China that has won, but the Communist party. The Chinese people have lost.
