Texas mystique (has been) created by the chemistry of the frontier in the crucible of history and forged into an enduring state of heart and mind.
Look, I still think Texas is a - is a red state. It's going to continue to be a red state. I think as people stay more time in Texas, they become red. They see what, you know, Texas, kind of low tax, you know, a pro-business economy is doing for them as well. It's a well-run state.
Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive.
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply - aware.
In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views-I just didn't think about religion.
We know that Texas is more than a state. Texas has always been a promise. The promise that where you start has nothing to do with how far you can come.
I think there in a great deal to be said for religious education in the sense of teaching about religion and biblical literacy. Both those things, by the way, I suspect will prepare a child to give up religion. If you are taught comparative religion, you are more likely to realise that there are other religions than the one you have been brought up in. And if you are if you are taught to read the bible, I can think of almost nothing more calculated to turn you off religion.
Texas has more effectively capitalized on its opportunities as a border state, and I've always said that I want to look to states that are doing better than we are and replicate those success stories in Arizona.
As far as value is concerned, the principal reason that I moved to Texas from New Jersey many, many years ago was because I recognized that Texas was a much more entrepreneurial state than New Jersey, that the opportunities to start things were greater in Texas. And my vision was fortunately fulfilled.
If a state political organization is founded in part upon a state religion with a dogma based on one or a few 'official' prophets, then shamanism, where every shaman is her or his own prophet, is dangerous to the state. [...] Shamanism, as I said, is not a religion. The spiritual experience usually becomes a religion after politics has entered into it.
As far as the political landscape in our state, I think that what we continue to see is that Tennessean voters are more independent and more conservative, and they are watching issues very closely; they are watching votes very closely.
Freedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.
I think if you exercise, your state of mind - my state of mind - is usually more at ease, ready for more mental challenges. Once I get the physical stuff out of the way it always seems like I have more calmness and better self-esteem.
In most states, it's more difficult to get a license for your dog than it is to buy a big cat. Right now, there are more tigers in the state of Texas than in all of India.
I think the post-Rick-Perry Texas is a Texas that is more competitive between the Democrats and Republicans. I think the Republicans still have a huge advantage, but I think if we're arguing that competition is good for the system, then I think a stronger two-party system in Texas is inevitable, and I think that it will happen.