Bridging the Gap Quotes

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

I come from a mixed family, where my mother is art house cinema and my father is B-movie genre cinema. They're estranged, and I've been trying to bring them together for all of my career to one degree or another.

I wouldn’t be too serious about bipartisanship. It’s a great myth that ought to be fostered. And don’t bring too damn much scholarship to bear on it. You’ll prove it out of existence if you’re not careful.

I believe in working together to solve the problems we've got. And we need to get rid of the venom in the political atmosphere in D.C. It's a poisonous atmosphere.

Figuring out a way to balance the Boxer story with the Chinese Christians was difficult.

I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.

Rhetorically, President Obama is a champion of bipartisanship. In practice, though, he is almost always its enemy.

The politicians are not the only people who are in their own silos. Many of our citizens only watch or listen to the news that they want to hear, and if there is anything else, they turn it off. We all need to listen to the people who are on the other side.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

Our young men will marry your daughters and we shall be one people.

Our differences needn't divide us, but unity takes work.

You know how it is: when you politicize things, it is not the best ingredient to get things done.

Too many prefer to cling to the thing that divides us, and precious few are willing to come together over the thing that unites us.

As the U.S. ambassador to Japan, I see this challenge of our younger generations not knowing each other as well as the prior generations.

For the first time in human history, there are no elders anymore who know what young people know.

People love to talk about the old bipartisanship. But it wasn't really bipartisanship. Yeah, they had a different label. But they're replaced now by people with basically the same views.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

I want the fans to know that just because we have a microphone; we're no different from you.

Education ... is the great equalizer of the conditions of men—the balance wheel of the social machinery.

If we put our differences aside, we can do great things.

There is a psychic gulf that exists between myself and my grandparents because they don't really speak English, and I don't speak Chinese, and that's my own personal shame because I did not learn, ever. I only saw my paternal grandma a few times in my life, and that's really crazy.

Whether I'm speaking to conservative or liberal audiences, I don't find that people are close-minded about the things I say. I'm still optimistic that we can bridge a divide between these various bubbles. But I do think that it requires a little bit of effort.

Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner.

Wedding films are always about the differences between people. But they haven't quite dealt with African-Americans and Latinos.

Unfortunately, the genuine relationships and friendships that some of us have developed across the aisle in recent years does not translate into a willingness to seek compromise, consensus, or middle ground on the major challenges facing our state. The extreme ideology of the self-styled Tea Party legislators in Arizona absolutely rules the day.