Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn't matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.
You were not created to just get by with an average, unrewarding, or unfulfilling life. God created you to leave your mark on this generation.
Everybody can't have the life of a normal, average American person in India - they can't. So, it's about egalitarianism. It's about sharing things more equally. It's about access to natural resources.
I spent my whole life as a writer talking to just the average guy in Los Angeles and Latin America, talking to working people.
The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.
The presentations and conceptions of the average man of the world are formed and dominated, not by the full and pure desire for knowledge as an end in itself, but by the struggle to adapt himself favourably to the conditions of life.
My idea at this time, which was slowly developing, was to create a comedie humaine with little people, average people - samples from every period in American life.
The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.
The average person can look at someone in public life and say they have it all, but they might be struggling. Or you may think another person has more apparent challenges, but she's deeply grateful for her life. I don't think anyone can judge what having it all means for someone else.
It is one of the triumphs of modern society that the life of the average person with Down Syndrome has become strikingly normal.
I have been working since I was 20, and I'm 38. I actually once averaged out what I had made over my professional life. I think I could have made that much as a waiter or an insurance salesman. You know, I spent so many years in my 20's making $10,000 a year.
There is a short window at the beginning of one's professional life, when it is comparatively easy to take big risks. Make the most of that time, before circumstances make you risk averse.
I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science.
I was one of those avid moviegoers as a kid, and we didn't have video, so we went to see everything five times. I went to see every foreign film playing in my town. As times went on, I watched a lot less films. I have a different film school now. My film school now is my life experience.
I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.
Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you'd never complete your life, would you? You'd never wholly know you.
At some point, life starts to pass you by and becomes about avoidance. I want to stay clear from that situation, because I don't like that.
Avoidance has never been a great tactic in solving any problem. For most situations in life, not addressing what's going on only makes matters worse.
You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
