There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

I think I'm a very good reader of poetry but obviously like everybody I have a set of criteria for reading poems and I'm not shy about presenting them so if people ask for my critical response to a poem I tell them what works and why and what doesn't work and why.

Egypt has been a partner of the United States over the last 30 years has been instrumental in keeping the peace in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel which is a critical accomplishment that has meant so much to so many people.

There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical questioning and often angry patriotism.

The money can be a hindrance to someone like me because the danger is that you start thinking 'Is that a $20 million take?' That kind of thing and being self-critical.

I found out that colonels can stay until they drop dead or get a walker and being a critical medical specialty as an Army trained emergency room doctor I could stay until age 67.

Civil and political rights are critical but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

The critical period of matrimony is breakfast-time.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

In my book I detail the critical information we obtained from al Qaeda terrorists after they became compliant following a short period of enhanced interrogation. I have no doubt that that interrogation was legal necessary and saved lives.

Productivity is going to be a critical issue. And it's not just about getting more time for professors in the classroom. It involves reexamining the learning experience and restructuring faculty and the use of faculty time.

I think most Americans understand that we went through a period in which American leadership was judged quite critically internationally.

In our system leadership is by consent not command. To lead a President must persuade. Personal contacts and experiences help shape his thinking. They can be critical to his persuasiveness and thus to his leadership.

I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing knows their subject matter and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap.

As this body of knowledge has evolved a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action.

Even scientific knowledge if there is anything to it is not a random observation of random objects for the critical objectivity of significant knowledge is attained as a practice only philosophically in inner action.

I strongly support the call to greatly expand our human intelligence capability to penetrate al Qaeda and gather critical intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks on our homeland.

While the intelligence profession oftentimes demands secrecy it is critically important that there be a full and open discourse on intelligence matters with the appropriate elected representatives of the American people.

The higher the general average of intelligence all things else being equal the less the disposition to be meddlesome critical and overbearing.

Newt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

Well the fact is that one imagination is critically important and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects you are much more amenable to accepting to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.