Richard Holbrooke Quotes

When you have those two languages - an analytic one like English and a synthetic, very sensual thing like Russian, you get almost a psychotic sense of humanity that permeates nearly everything. It can help you understand, and it can discourage you, because you see how little can be done.

We have to connect to our fans through the media, and when you talk about that, it's got to come from your heart. And when it comes from your heart, it has to be absolutely consistent. There's a big risk you take without an interpreter because, as professional baseball players, we are here to perform baseball, not to learn a language.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

As Muslims, we must have an active presence based on ethical and moral consistency. We need to be very vocal, to inform people, to demonstrate when necessary. We need to write so that the people understand that what they are getting from the media and politicians is biased and not accurate. And this is true especially when it comes to some communities within the U.S. or with respect to the Middle East and Africa. This is what I am expecting from a new generation of leaders: Meet these expectations of moral consistency.

One of the things I tend to do is open myself up to a variety of voices. I try to expose myself to the kind of culture shock that occurs when you talk to people who speak a different language.

I've always dreamed of getting to know the women of other countries better. When I was a boy, I remember, I used to get angry at the thought that I did not know German or American or Swedish women.

The important thing for me is that I try to understand the culture. Everything I thought I knew about the country was either through TV, music, movies or hopping in and out when I did shows. You can't just get the US through being in Miami, LA and New York. Middle America is the place to understand real America.

If you want to know a country, read its writers.

In a language known to us, we have substituted the opacity of the sounds with the transparence of the ideas. But a language we donot know is a closed place in which the one we love can deceive us, making us, locked outside and convulsed in our impotence, incapable of seeing or preventing anything.

The traveled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness and egotism.

A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.

The thing that intrigues me about Matthew is that I don't believe anybody would read it if they aren't Jewish and understand it. And so to say that publicly as a Christian is kind of interesting.

I suppose our lives need to be more integrated. We have white communities and black communities and white country clubs and black country clubs. It's very important when we integrate ourselves, and it helps us to have a better understanding of the world, to people all over the world and this is the time in history that we have become very aware of how important that is, so I think it's just really-we have to know each other and work together and play together in order to write about each other.

I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language.

I have known the Indians intimately - known them in their private relations - I think I understand the Indian character pretty well.

The more competition and the more voices - that's why I love bloggers and anything else the Internet can produce in the way of new news voices.

If, like many others, you are concerned social media is making people and cultures shallow, I propose we teach more people how to swim and together explore the deeper end of the pool.

For echo is the soul of the voice exciting itself in hollow places.

There's people, like me and Jaden [Smith], who want to utilize social media to elevate the consciousness of those people who feel like all they want from social media is to be famous.Like, you can actually be a voice. You can actually say something that's inspiring and not just make people feel like you need to buy things and be a certain way.

I think it's deeply important for us to know, especially when we come from the outside, how "ordinary people" think and feel and what their expectations are and what their concerns are. Also what's in their imaginations, what's in their minds, even what their rumors are and what their gossip is.

Normally, the opposition gets more media space and even the people find it interesting to listen to voices against the government of the day.

"We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well?..."

I can understand bitchiness in any language.

We actors don't travel as tourists with a camera, we really get to enter the life of a place and get to know it.