Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it that the Union was preserved.

I believe wholeheartedly in marriage. I don't exclusively mean a marriage with a legal contract but any relationship that constitutes a marriage because of the quality of their relationship.

In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that's called marriage and allowing them to live together with the protection of law it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country.

I didn't have a regular school experience and wanted a more abstract way of learning. I started exploring in lots of different creative ways. It gave me the opportunity to travel and play music so it was good for me.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

It's learning how to negotiate to keep both sides happy - whether it's for a multi-million dollar contract or just which show to watch on TV that determines the quality and enjoyment of our lives.

No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.

In many ways it was much much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people publicists and so forth implicitly.

It is sad that the Republican leadership is not as interested as they say they are in protecting the institution of marriage as they are in waging a campaign to divide and distract the American people from the real issues that need to be addressed.

I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual I'm too abstract I think too much.

The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

Music is at once the product of feeling and knowledge for it requires from its disciples composers and performers alike not only talent and enthusiasm but also that knowledge and perception which are the result of protracted study and reflection.

You make knowledge relevant to life and you make it important for children to learn things that will really relate to things going on in their lives and not abstract.

Just like I find men who talk sports who don't really know sports annoying I think men might find women who don't really have a true passion and knowledge of sports maybe not so attractive.

Exclusively of the abstract sciences the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.

Jealousy is a dog's bark which attracts thieves.

Lincoln's stature and strength his intelligence and ambition - in short all the elements which gave him popularity among men in New Salem rendered him equally attractive to the fair sex of that village.

Someday we'll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6 2001 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9 his first prime-time address to the nation.

Television contracts the imagination and radio expands it.

It is the work of fancy to enlarge but of judgment to shorten and contract and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination.

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known using that as scaffolding and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

The woman who appeals to a man's vanity may stimulate him the woman who appeals to his heart may attract him but it is the woman who appeals to his imagination who gets him.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.