Mary Pipher Quotes

A healthy state encourages many voices - and lots of listening.

Baseball and its teams are proud of the sport's long-standing role as a change agent in American culture and society.

America needs a big idea that plays to its strength. It should look to national service.

It's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. you'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating.

When people get this consciousness of the way things are supposed to be in America - that the locus of agency is in them, that they are supposed to be the ones setting the agenda - if people believe this, they get very energized. Yeah, it's annoying to have this extra burden of saving the country.

I just hope we can find our way back to engaging with one another, arguing strongly with one another, and then going down and having a root beer together or something and - and having a good laugh about it as we work together for the best interests of the next generation of Americans who are going to inherit this country.

I'm not a good listener some times. I'm too much of a control freak. I'm learning to be better. I was so caught up in just getting the job done that I would miss out on the human aspect of this. There was a connection missing.

Baseball has done more to move America in the right direction than all of the professional patriots with all their cheap words.

You know, we do a lot of complaining here in America. And that itself is something they can't do in a lot of other countries.

Young people are this country [America], and we need to speak out.

The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don’t talk anymore, they don’t sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories.

Instead of yelling your opinion, or telling people to shut up, or engaging in this clickbait-internet culture, have a dialogue with someone and ask people questions and listen to what they have to say.

I think America is moving to a much more connected, inclusive and compassionate place.

The goal is to keep the dialogue open. There are issues in the USA that a lot of people feel strongly about. The goal is just to fix those issues. To make progress on those issues.

We live in America, one of the good things what we have with all the people is we have dialogue.

I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can't lose that in this country. We've got to get it back.

Let me tell you what would be a really, really great project for all of us. Why don't we start mentoring kids? Whether we're liberal or conservative, why don't we start going into the schools and giving the kids a sense of their own purpose, their own self-worth, their future, and what they can learn from us? You know, if we're mentoring kids together, we might actually begin to talk to one another again and listen to one another. We have a big crisis all over the country and in our state on drugs.

Those that fight don't listen, those that listen don't fight.

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.

I’m haunted sometimes by the thought, what if we lived from that place all the time? What if we went there without tragedy striking first? The very thought of who we would be together, and the kinds of collectives decisions we would make...the kind of world we’d create ... makes me want to cry sometimes.

I'm not American, but I do have an opinion, and I think that right now, it is what it is, and I think the country needs to come together to say: What is the America we want to create right now? The same thing will happen on television now going forward if we do have a female president. It will be something that will be discussed.

I've always wondered if people who block each other from expressing their opinions do so because they have so little confidence in their own. To me, encountering an opposing point of view is a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the issues at stake and develop my own point of view. But the first thing you've got to do is you've got to let people speak and you've got to listen. And that's what the first amendment is all about. That's what really distinguishes this country from others.

The great charm of conversation consists less in the display of one's own wit and intelligence than in the power to draw forth the resources of others.

Another thing is, people lose perspective. It is a cultural trait in America to think in terms of very short time periods. My advice is: learn history. Take responsibility for history. Recognise that sometimes things take a long time to change. If you look at your history in this country, you find that for most rights, people had to struggle. People in this era forget that and quite often think they are entitled, and are weary of struggling over any period of time

A great writer named Neal Stephenson said that America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery. All of these are sacred American art forms. Let's return to our purity and our idealism while we have this shot.