John Adams Quotes
My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet the common fate.
Quotes to Explore
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Not to oversimplify it, somebody once said a good rule of thumb in interpreting a character is to find the good in the bad people that you portray and the bad in the good.
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For nearly a century and a half, this country deluded itself into thinking that its greatest calamity, the Civil War, had nothing to do with one of its greatest sins, enslavement. It deluded itself in this manner despite available evidence to the contrary.
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I don't believe in God personally but I have great respect for those people who do and different people have different religious views in this country.
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If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.
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One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination.
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In my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal.
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You have to have been a Republican to know how good it is to be a Democrat.
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I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music.
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Even if you have $20,000 to buy an item, you still try to get a good price at antique stores. I collect furniture, rugs, paintings, frames. It's my hobby to go around to shops and markets.
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The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini.
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Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us.
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I work with Sally and I can see Sally doing that. She is very aggressive. Very fun loving and charming... and pushy in a very competitive way and a very healthy way and a very good actress.
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They see me as being this Super Mom on TV who also can more than handle a difficult husband, and they assume I'm going to be just full of wisdom as a mother and wife myself.
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The good thing is that I'm always honest.
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I love a good fight and I think a bad fight can ruin a movie. I really do.
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People in America and Hollywood are very good at pronouncing my name, to begin with. Socially, they're very adept at listening to somebody's name and repeating it, cleverly in the first couple of sentences so the name sticks to begin with.
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What I loved about country music when I was a kid was the Grand Ole Opry, was 'Hee Haw,' was 360 degrees of entertainment.
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If you love food and you love red wine and they put you in France, you're in a good place and you're in a bad place at the same time. You have to weigh yourself every day, and you have to have an alarm number. When you get to that number, you have to start putting it in reverse.
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People in Michigan are good at separating fact from fiction. They know, better than most of the country, what happens to the economy and jobs when the scales are tipped too far in favor of one group over another.
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In 1980, when I graduated from high school, my goal was to be on 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson at least once before our ten-year class reunion. Our class reunion was in June of 1990, and I was on 'The Tonight Show' in April 1990, so I made it by a few months.
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You'll shoot the moon... put out the sun... when you love someone.
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Our goal is to see Big History become a normal part of high school curricula. I'd love to see it being taught in lots of languages. A global course.
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The fear that individuality will be crushed out by the growing 'tyranny' of standardization is the sort of myth which cannot withstand the briefest examination.
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My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet the common fate.
