Thinking Quotes - Page 874

I think I've done a lot in this business, whether through screwball methods or not I don't know, that has helped other bands. I made a kind of road for them, you might say. If I raised my price, they found out about it and raised theirs. But somebody had to start it, to make the first move. You have to have the courage and confidence in your own ability. You have to know what the hell and who the hell you are in this business. Music may change, but I don't think that ever will.

In all honesty, I think I just played what I felt was right for me. And I think I would have done the same thing, even if I'd been born later, when Charlie Parker was influencing everybody. The truth is, I never gave it much thought. I just played what I had to play.

To cease to think creatively is to cease to live

I wish the government would read the Constitution. I think that would probably help quite a bit. And maybe they did read it and maybe they got confused when they read the preamble which says one of the duties is to promote the general welfare.

Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying people who say things really quite innocently.

I don't think I could be a foot soldier. I don't know if I could take orders too good. I'm a little lazy.

You can do what you think you can do and you cannot do what you think you cannot

I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.

I love the process of cutting everything out with a scalpel yourself: I don't want to have my stencils drawn up in Illustrator, then laser-cut. I like the fact that it's slightly wrong; I think it gives it a beauty. The individual and handmade will always be worth more than what a computer can do, at least until computers can learn how to make mistakes.

Golf is the hardest game in the world. There is no way you can ever get it. Just when you think you do, the game jumps up and puts you in your place.

Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.

That is different, to have someone think that I am evil when I really am not.

I have lived too completely. I think I have known every human emotion.

I think everybody should just turn off their TV machines and make up their own songs about whatever comes to mind-their couch, their friends their loaves of bread. Everybody's got their own songs. There should be so many songs out there that it all turns into one big sound and we can put the whole thing into a pickup truck and let it roll off the edge of the Grand Canyon.

I think prejudice and tradition count for three-quarters in matters of religion.

I've had them both, and I don't think much of either.

The proud think that their opinion alone is right. They cannot see the good points of others, as the humble do, and appreciate their opinions. That is why there is such disagreement, strife and quarrelling and even irrreconciliation in families and in other groups.

Do you call the people in Los Angeles in the nineties - do you call them rebels or opposition ? They are rebels. They are not rebels even, they are beheading. This opposition, opposing country or government, by beheading ? By barbecuing heads ? By eating the hearts of your victim ? Is that opposition ? What do you call the people who attacked the two towers on the 11th of September ? Opposition ? Even if they're not Americans, I know this, but some of them I think have nationality - I think one of them has American nationality. Do you call him opposition or terrorist ?

I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.

When you fully understand the situation, it is worse than you think.

You think you're the foreigner here, and I'm the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too.

I just think Australia tends to make very good movies, so if someone hands me an Australian or an American film script I would guess the Australian film would be more intriguing.

Some of us still get all weepy when we think about the Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that earth is a big furry goddess-creature who resembles everybody's mom in that she knows what's best for us. But if you look at the historical record - Krakatoa, Mt. Vesuvius, Hurricane Charley, poison ivy, and so forth down the ages - you have to ask yourself: Whose side is she on, anyway?

As a practical matter, it is hard to think of any society in human history in which a majority population has said that as a consequence of historic wrongs, we are now going to take a big chunk of the nation's resources over a long period of time to make that right.

The day I'm inaugurated, this country looks at itself differently and the world looks at America differently. If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am a messenger who can deliver that message around the world in a way that no other candidate can do.