I've been surprised by Austin. I had a cowboy image of the place. It's a pretty sophisticated city - in some ways, more sophisticated than Boston. And there's a lighter feel to the place. It's very good for my spirits.
When you see Bret Hart versus Steve Austin, it just seemed so much more real than Hulk Hogan versus Sgt. Slaughter.
I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.
All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year.
I am libertarian, and Americans generally are, more than, say, Canadians and Australians.
Maybe I should have played two more Australians and two less Davis Cups? I could have had more majors and still have three Davis Cups when most people don't have one.
I think probably Australians have just a little more taste than most people.
At the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in Austria, there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in Austria was much more pervasive than in Germany. And Austrians took to Nazi ideas and anti-Semitism much more readily than Germans did, really.
Once I was able to be my more authentic self, I felt like that's when my career really took off. I was just my own voice.
I know of nothing more valuable, when it comes to the all-important virtue of authenticity, than simply being who you are.
There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil.
Few times in history do totalitarian or authoritarian regimes successfully repress their people for more than two generations, and zero times in history do these regimes last much longer than that, relatively speaking.
Too many countries of the former Soviet bloc remain under the control of authoritarian leaders, including some, like the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who have learned how to maintain a more convincing facade of elections than their communist predecessors.
Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.
I was taught, growing up, that there are two ends of the political spectrum: left and right. But there's so much more than that. For me, it's about liberty versus authoritarianism.
The real problem with the Republican Party is that for decades it has shifted constantly to the right politically. Consequently, the Republican Party is picking up a very different demographic than it used to, a less well-educated demographic of people who are more prone to authoritarianism.
It is urgent to shift from a traditional, authoritative, rote educational approach to a project-based and experiential approach. Specific hard skills are fundamental, but is even more important that students 'learn how to learn' and focus on crucial soft skills such as flexibility and the ability to adapt to change.
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
