Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The fact of the matter is, Obama and the Democrats did a number on Mitt Romney's reputation and his character and his image with outrageous commercials that I thought nobody in their right mind was gonna believe. I know they're gonna appeal to somebody, but they appeal to far more. People may not have believed it specifically, but it did enough damage to make people say, "I don't know. I just don't like this Romney guy. Stick with what we got."

I always think that you have to have a certain understanding of what an audience would want to see from you as a public person as well as a character.

I’ve never treated anyone badly or in a discriminatory way based on their gender, race, religion or sexuality - period. I don’t blame some people for thinking that though, from the garbage they heard on those leaked tapes, which have been edited. You have to put it all in the proper context of being in an irrationally, heated discussion at the height of a breakdown, trying to get out of a really unhealthy relationship. It’s one terribly, awful moment in time, said to one person, in the span of one day and doesn’t represent what I truly believe or how I’ve treated people my entire life.

Casting is so important, with any film you do. You have to get actors that you believe will fulfill the promise of the characters that are on the page.

I believe that we start to see our true personalities when we go through the most difficult moments. This is when we get stronger

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.

I surprised myself, that I was in the tissue of the character enough, that I could actually come up with something that I didn't actually feel or didn't believe.

Most of us are flawed, complicated people, and we're all trying very hard to disguise that or hide it from the public. Ultimately, we respond to someone who's capable of doing heroic things but has issues or problems in their life that they can't seem to resolve. I believe audiences identify with that. All of us have those secrets and those things that we wish we could improve about ourselves. And when you have someone who's heroic and flawed, I think it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Character alone will have real effect on the masses.

Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.

I believe the way we dress on a daily basis is our message we put out to the world. People tweet me all the time that I dress like a clown. That's the point. Those are characteristics I've adapted because it makes me happy. I like it when people think I dress like a clown or a five-year-old kid.

Are my characters copies of people in real life? ... Don't ever believe the stories about authors putting people into novels. That idea is a kind of joke on both authors and readers. All the readers believe that authors do it. All the authors know that it can't be done.

Hillary Clinton's not seen as empathetic and compassionate.

People tell me I'm in a genre kind of movie, but it never crossed my mind that The Matrix was genre. To me it was about, for me anyway, my character, I had this rock outside my door which said "faith" or "believe" or something, and I remember felt like that was my key into her, into Trinity. It was like she was the heart of it.

The evolution of government from its medieval, Mafia-like character to that embodying modern legal institutions and instruments is a major part of the history of freedom. It is a part that tends to be obscured or ignored because of the myopic vision of many economists, who persist in modeling government as nothing more than a gigantic form of theft and income redistribution.

Neil [Gaiman, creator of the comic Sandman, featuring the Amos-based character Delirium] believes that faeries have gone beyond cool. They've transcended cool. I just think alternate realities make you a good writer. If your work is any more than one dimension, you believe in faeries. I'm sure I'll start thinking now about all the people I know who don't believe, that I quite like. We can still go have a pint. Not the Chardonnay, though.

Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are not known.

Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.

I was born to love - but none of you wanted to believe it, and that misunderstanding was crucial in forming my character. It's true that nature was strangely inconsistent in giving me a warm heart, but also a face that was like a stone mask and a tongue that was heavy and slow. She refused me what she bestowed freely on even the most loutish of my fellow men. . . . People judged my inner character by my outer covering, and like a sterile fruit, I withered under the rough husk I couldn't slough off.

I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.

When you start off with your first book, people assume that you're like all the characters in the book - and it does complicate things, when you're being constantly bombarded with it, but you have to embrace it.

I try not to articulate ideas in the film once I've arrived on the plot and the characters. I believe that if I focus my attention with enough compassion and heart on those things, then other things will be revealed, and that's from the education that I've had from the novel.

The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.

Maybe I had something to do with that. I don't know. But public don't believe press. If you were straight and really told it like it is, as Howard Cosell used to say, right? Of course, he had some questions also. But, if you were straight, I would be your biggest booster. I would be your biggest fan in the world, including bad stories about me. But if you go - as an example, you're CNN. I mean, it's story after story after story is bad.