Man after all my grandma put into me learning the piano that was a hard day telling her I was telling jokes for a living.

The truth is the Republican leadership has created a credit card Congress that is recklessly selling out the future of America our children and our grandchildren and President Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible President in the history of America.

The function of the politician therefore is one of continuous watchfulness and activity and he must have intimate knowledge of details if he would work out grand results.

May I say finally that I have no illusions of grandeur quite to the contrary I am very humble in my knowledge that through forty years of my life my life has been an open book of service to my fellow architects and for the public good.

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching to love their neighbors then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

Grandchildren have taught me how important the future is. I try to look through their eyes and envision what's in their imagination. What's the world going to look like when they're my age? That really does take a huge imagination.

To think and to feel constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination.

My identity is linked to my grandmother who's pure Filipino as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.

At NBC I wasn't really sure if the grandparents were going to get my sense of humor on a particular topic.

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.'

When I think about the world I would like to leave to my daughter and the grandchildren I hope to have it is a world that moves away from unequal unstable unsustainable interdependence to integrated communities - locally nationally and globally - that share the characteristics of all successful communities.

My grandmother always taught me 'If you don't have a home family and church you don't have anything.'

Don't get me wrong - I've gone to a club. But I'd much rather be with my close friends at home or a concert or on a trip. I'll go dancing with my grandma. She likes to cut a rug!

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history for instance because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.

It's in the history books the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

Obamacare is a seriously flawed law that makes health care coverage less affordable costs taxpayers more than advertised and fails to deliver on most of its other grand promises.

If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle why can't grandma have a constitutional right to health care?

For the sake of our health our children and grandchildren and even our economic well-being we must make protecting the planet our top priority.

The fabric of North Carolina and what makes our state so special is our families and our common desire for a brighter future for our children. No matter what your family looks like we all want the same thing for our families - happiness health prosperity a bright future for our children and grandchildren.

My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.

Alas! if the principles of contentment are not within us the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man's stature as to his happiness.

Happiness that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life impels us through all its mazes and meanderings but leads none of us by the same route.

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do something to love and something to hope for.

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.