What were once only hopes for the future have now come to pass it is almost exactly 13 years since the overwhelming majority of people in Ireland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of the agreement signed on Good Friday 1998 paving the way for Northern Ireland to become the exciting and inspirational place that it is today.

On Australia Day 2010 as we enter this second decade of the 21st century Australians can be optimistic about our future but we cannot afford to mistake optimism for complacency.

It is our job as members of parliament to legislate with an eye to the long term future to look over the horizon beyond the next election and ensure that as far as we can what we do today will make Australia a better place a safer place for future generations to live in.

What's interesting about books that take place in the future even twenty years in the future is that many of them are black or white: It's either a utopia or it's misery. The real truth is that there's going to be both things in any future just like there is now.

Looking ahead future generations may learn their social skills from robots in the first place. The cute yellow Keepon robot from Carnegie Mellon University has shown the ability to facilitate social interactions with autistic children. Morphy at the University of Washington happily teaches gestures to children by demonstration.

The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.

By doing something positive in this world you're helping people and the future. We're all trying to help the world... make it a better place to live. We're actually still changing the world aren't we?

The debt-ceiling vote isn't about what will be done in the future it is about the integrity of America's commitment to support the bonds we issue. Elected officials have an obligation to maintain that integrity regardless of whether they voted for the programs that required the borrowing in the first place.

The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis the balance of power war and peace and the economic future of the next generation.

I'm happy I'm in a good place I'm looking forward to my future.

At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future tradition has placed 10 000 men to guard the past.

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

At some future period not very distant as measured by centuries the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world.

The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that but for future use.

I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.

He is very dry but also very funny... I think people tend to feel odd when I do my act. Unless you are an ironic person it's not a good place for you to be.

If you think something's funny go with that. Most comedians pull jokes from a place of honesty.

I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny. Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking.

I recently spent quite a bit of time in Sheffield England which is where I'm from. I wouldn't move back there but it's funny when you spend a bit of time in the place where you were brought up. You kind of realize how that place has had quite a big effect on you or made you a certain way.

I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny that humor comes from a much gentler place.

Something about New York man: You can do more comedy there probably than you can anywhere in the world. If you're interested in being funny New York is the place to go.

I always find it kind of embarrassing kind of funny and kind of exciting. In New York I'm recognized a lot although nobody says anything. You know they stare at you just a second too long. But in Paris it's not as commonplace to be recognized.

At home in L.A. Sunday is lazy. It's the wife and me lying in bed with coffee watching 'The Soup' or something funny on TiVo. The kid will occasionally join us. Eventually breakfast is at a place down the street called Paty's. And we always have some kind of great dinner - my wife makes a great roast beef.

I've thought for the last decade or so the only actual place raw truth was seeping through in newspapers was on the Comics Pages. They were able to pull off intelligent social comment pure truths not found elsewhere in the news pages and had the ability to make it all funny entertaining and pertinent.