Anne Waldman Quotes

It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.

I think people when they think of comedic actors they forget that they are people with a point of view and experiences and depth.

I get on stage and talk about different stuff in my life and what I've been through and what I think about the world. It's picking out highlights of things and how I became who I am and how my daddy raised me.

When we have a brilliant idea, instead of making others think it is ours, why not let them cook and stir the idea themselves.

There are five billion human beings and in a certain way I think we need five billion different religions.

The ordinary method of education is to imprint ideas and opinions, in the strict sense of the word, prejudices, on the mind of the child, before it has had any but a very few particular observations. It is thus that he afterwards comes to view the world and gather experience through the medium of those ready-made ideas, rather than to let his ideas be formed for him out of his own experience of life, as they ought to be.

When I think of my background, if I was privileged on any level, it was in terms of the kind of exposure to experience and bohe-mian cultural influence that my parents and my uncles and my grandfather gave me. On both sides I come from an extremely eccentric, artsy, intellectually intense, activist family.

[J.F Kennedy] was a congressman and a senator and he would go on to be president. I had that idea as a little boy, and I used to joke to people but nobody told me that his father was ambassador to England and that he was a war hero, and he was, you know.

If we move away from either/or thinking, and if we think, okay, every day of my life that I walk out of my house I am a combination of race, gender, class, sexual preference and religion or what have you, what gets foregrounded?

Our [former] governor [Pat McCrory] was supposed to be a moderate, but he found himself beholden to people who have much more draconian ideas. I think he assumed this stuff flew under the radar.

My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

What I am really interested in is that I want people to be thinking in other ways - to stop thinking they have to remain glued to a system that has failed and to ideas about society that's necessarily about being run by Democrats or Republicans.

If thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinions as much as is supposed.

The very thing about people that makes the human race interesting is also the thing that makes it so hard to get anything done without the most horrible confusions: no two people think exactly the same way about anything.

In healthy families, children discover (through being listened to) that what they have to say is important and that their experiences and ideas (and they themselves) have worth. They are encouraged to think for themselves, express opinions, and make decisions for themselves. Parents supporting them in standing on their own two feet and doing what they think is right. Trusting and gaining confidence in themselves, they develop an inner locus of control.

When two texts, or two assertions, perhaps two ideas, are in contradiction, be ready to reconcile them rather than cancel one by the other; regard them as two different facets, or two successive stages, of the same reality, a reality convincingly human just because it is too complex.

I would acknowledge that [Paul] Ryan has some really good ideas about things, and I think they'll get together, like taxes. Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore, they've been supportive of Ryan's tax view and now they're very supportive of [Donald] Trump's. So I think that's got potential.

You know, the process, I think, is the story. And it goes back, again, to what I said about chance and about radical contingency, the idea that all of this is this well-oiled machine that's been reared up and, like, really articulated and thought about.

You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers - you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.

My mom was always a fan of just really elegant, sophisticated pieces. I mean we grew up in Maine, so we didn't have a lot of call for black tie or anything, but I think I definitely got that sensibility from her.

Liberals are people who think that being tough on crime means longer suspended sentences.

Life's complicated and people do things for a lot of reasons. I think if you live in a black-and-white world, you're gonna suffer a lot. I used to be like that. But I don't believe that anymore.

I think there are families that are very kind and supportive of people's ability to change. People who come from such families may go through life without dipping into the dark night.

If you're waiting for encouragement from others, you're doing it wrong. By the time people think an idea is good, it's probably too late.

I think of my father born in this very small, limited situation and then coming out of that. Many people have this story.