A Quote by Ralph Waite

I have vanity and greed enough for one person. But at the same time, I feel in my bones you lose a lot of life's value if you don't see yourself as a member of the family of man.
A lot of people have a lot of things going on in their life. You'll be walking past ten people in the middle of the day and not even notice, but someone might have a family member that died, or someone might be going through a hard time. Sometimes you're the only person that someone might see that lifts them up.
I feel that sometimes, holding yourself as black, saying that is your sole identity, can sometimes stand in your way of being a member of the humanity of man, being a member of the family of the divine.
It was so easy to disown what you couldn't recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.
Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.
What do I see when I look in the mirror? One handsome man. No, I see the same person I have seen for the last 27 years: the person I believed I could be when I was a child, the person I have inspired and dreamed to be all my life, and that's the person I have seen, from being that big to as big as the roof - the same guy.
We all wish we could be in more than one place at the same time. People with families feel guilty all the time-if we spend too much time with our family, we feel we're not working hard enough.
Most people never feel secure because they are always worried that they will lose their job, lose the money they already have, lose their spouse, lose their health, and so on. The only true security in life comes from knowing that every single day you are improving yourself in some way, that you are increasing the caliber of who you are and that you are valuable to your company, your friends, and your family.
The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).
Probably the worst time in a person's life is when they have to kill a family member because they are the devil. But otherwise it's been a pretty good day.
I think that's a luxury - to have a nomadic life and to be a kind of bohemian. You feel totally free and you can adapt yourself very easily. But at the same time you can totally lose balance, because you don't know where you belong anymore.
Right now I am full of greed and vanity, so I cannot live with you like before. But may be we can meet like this. I think just being together and talking would be nice. But when we grow old, when greed and vanity will be completely gone, when I will be tired of singing can I return to that place too?
Within time, you get comfortable with yourself and with the unknown - that we're not going to know until that time comes. And that's enough for me. I wrestle with this a lot even now because I don't want to step on anyone's religion. My family is still very dedicated. At the same time, I take great issue with it when it starts defining policy or ultimately becomes separatist. ... It's been the basis of our main conflicts throughout history.
I have a pretty close family and there are certain similarities - maybe a lot of families have this - where geographically, we're separated, so there are times when one family member will be needing a lot at one particular moment, so everyone rallies around that particular family member. Then there are other moments where, if [the family is] okay, I might not talk to my brother for two or three weeks, but then if I get him on the phone at five in the afternoon, it feels like we spoke that morning.
The traditional family table is round. No corners. No sides. No head. No tail. Everything is smooth. The food is in the center, and each family member reaches over the same distance. Someone you love is next to you on each side, and no one is last or at the end. The person farthest away from you is also the person facing you.
The idea that you live your life in phases - I've never bought that. I feel like I'm the same person who sat in at the draft board in 1965, I'm the same person who joined a fraternity, I'm the same person who got an MFA at Bennington, and I'm the same person who founded Weather Underground. My values are still intact.
History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
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