If you're going to make sense of politics you have to have a historical perspective and also recognise that you have to work with people you don't agree with.
Why would you create a movie for black people if you don't understand the history and perspective of the people you are doing it for? You need historical perspective to make sound decisions.
....the popular music of Jamaica, the music of the people, is an essentially experiential music, not merely in the sense that the people experience the music, but also in the sense that the music is true to the historical experience, that the music reflects the historical experience. It is the spiritual expression of the historical experience of the Afro-Jamaican.
I've also been documenting an unsustainable way of life. And you see in peoples' stories that this world of consumerism does not support the moral and spiritual values - of family and community - that people feel are most important. From an environmental perspective, the quest for more and more is not going to be possible on this planet. This is a historical documentation of an unsustainable path, and my hope is that this work allows people to think about their own agency and the potential for change.
Shakespeare set a lot of his dramas in a historical perspective or war perspective, or he would study what was going on at that time.
I agree some people are biased, and I agree that they exist in a world of pure, sheer, raw hatred for anything they don't agree with, but I do believe they're also ignorant. I think they're dumb as skunks. I don't think they've been educated. They haven't the ability to hear and listen to common sense and understand what it is.
For 'The Grace of Kings,' I read Han Dynasty historical records in Classical Chinese, which allowed me to get a sense of the complexity of the politics and the 'surprisingly modern' reactions of the historical figures to recurrent problems of state administration.
There's certainly enough writers and directors and actors who secretly aspire to make movies and films that agree with the center-right perspective, and I would argue the majority perspective in America.
I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy, with kings, queens, dukes and court politics, but of course like what I was explaining before, about making the science make sense, you have to make the politics make sense, too.
On every front there are clear answers out there that can make this country stronger, but we're going to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling. Our job is to make sure that even as we make progress, that we are also giving people a sense of hope and vision for the future.
We still have too much air and water pollution and we still need to work to reduce it. But we also need to put the problem of pollution into a historical as well as scientific perspective.
But I also want to change the dynamics of this debate, which has kept us gridlocked into positions which caused people to shoot at abortion clinics and other Americans to view it as the only issue in American politics, ... There are areas we can agree on. ... We need to work together to eliminate abortion.
Boxing is a business. I'm not going to say I would never work with people again because we have had disagreements in the past. So if it makes money it makes sense. That doesn't mean we won't agree again in the future.
The Democrats are going to tax everybody through the roof. It is going to be focused on people that are wealthy because that's who they can tax. When you look at the stimulus plan - see, this doesn't make any sense, this is not working, it's not going to work, it's not intended to work the way we all were told it was gonna work. Health care is not going to get better. It's gonna get worse. It's gonna get rationed. The economy, the energy sector, nothing is being improved here. Everything's being wrecked.
We would be somewhat foolish to work out something on stopping us from going over the cliff and then a month or six weeks later Republicans pull the same game they did before and say, 'We're not going to do anything - unless this happens, we're not going to agree to increasing the debt ceiling.' I agree with the president, it has to be a package deal.
Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.
I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics.