Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

It is the style of an office seeker rather than that of a soldier.

In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate-look to his character.

Architectural features of true democratic ground-freedom would rise naturally from topography, which means that buildings would all take on the nature and character of the ground on which in endless variety they would stand and be component part.

The 'Inside-Out' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self, with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.

I did feel Dr. Cox, the character that I was auditioning for, was too similar to the head of the hospital. He was too arrogant and mean. I approached him kind of like I had a miniature Max sitting on my shoulder. I pictured Max saying, "This guy has got to give love every once in a while. He has to!" I knew there had to be tiny little windows of redemption.

I think there's a great connection between these two characters for sure. I mean, I don't know if she's coming over for dinner on the Barton ranch.

I am a registered Democrat (there are only two Republicans in Maryland and they're both in office) and two-time unsuccessful candidate for office myself.

I think you always need to be able to relate to your characters, but that doesn't necessarily mean...you have to understand why they do what they do, but you don't actually have to be like that yourself.

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart.

Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity, in the many ways in which such violation is possible.

Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request--it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the presidential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.

As a director, you have a thousand things going on in your head, and of course, that's going to be difficult. That's going to mean that some things get overlooked. And so, for us as performers, being the selfish pricks that we are, we're sitting there being concerned about ourselves all the time and our character's through-line.

I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives.

Politicians are interesting people, most of them are smart and hard-working-I mean, they keep schedules no one else would think of keeping. Some of them live down to the caricature, but most of them are good people and they are charming.

Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem.

Keep integrity and your work ethics intact. So what if that means working a little harder; an honorable character is your best calling card, and that's something anyone can have!

The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.

I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even 'pass the salt' - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.

She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity.

I always think about what it means to wear eyeglasses. When you get used to glasses you don't know how far you could really see. I think about all the people before eyeglasses were invented. It must have been weird because everyone was seeing in different ways according to how bad their eyes were. Now, eyeglasses standardize everyone's vision to 20-20. That's an example of everyone becoming more alike. Everyone could be seeing at different levels if it weren't for glasses.

Our opponents say more children are living in poverty than when we came into office. And that's probably right.

I think people are really starting to rebel against that. And I think there's going to be more and more gray areas. Hopefully that means we'll see more stories with characters that could be interchangeable with men.

You have to put your ego aside as an actor. Or you're using your ego to tell the story. Your body is a part of a tool to tell the story. So if you feel something, it's wrong. It means you're not inside of the character.

Capitalism can be alright, I mean Karl Marx didn't live to see what Roosevelt did with that Depression. He pulled everybody out of that Depression and everybody hated Franklin Roosevelt. He got into office four times. One after the other, with everybody saying, he can't get in again. Everybody voted for Roosevelt four times and he did a hell of a lot.

I think hopefully as you're getting older you're getting parts that require more preparation, and by that I just mean - I don't know, usually the older you get you get characters with more responsibility. Each one is different, there are certain movies that when the guy starts you pretty much come with that character on page one and then you see their growth, whereas other guys a lot has happened before that movie starts and you have to come in with something.