Ask Quotes - page 90
All intellectual property rights are just licenses granted by society because it was thought, rightly or wrongly, that society as a whole would benefit by granting them. But in any particular situation, we have to ask: are we really better off granting such license? What kind of act are we licensing a person to do?
Richard Stallman
Joanna (Lady of Wales): Mama... why do I not look like you? Why do I have hair black like a crow?
Clemence: Because you take after him. That was all I asked of God, that I need not see him each time I looked into your face. Little enough to ask, I should think. But we do pay and pay for our sins, it seems, and you grow more like him with each day that passes.
Sharon Kay Penman
I'll cut out government spending that's not working, that we can't afford, but I'm also going to ask anybody making over $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rates they were paying under Bill Clinton, back when our economy created 23 million new jobs, the biggest budget surplus in history and everybody did well. Just like we've tried their plan, we tried our plan - and it worked. That's the difference. That's the choice in this election. That's why I'm running for a second term.
Barack Obama
I think the most important thing for young people is that they're not trapped in the past. And human progress is driven by looking at a problem with fresh eyes, with new eyes. [...] And that's the power of young people, is asking why. Little kids, they naturally do that, right? When you talk to a four-year-old or a five-year-old, six-year-old, you tell them to do something -- "Why?" "Why?" And sometimes, as parents, we try to say, "because I told you so." And we don't want to talk about it, right? But that impulse to ask why is actually what drives human progress. [...] Vision is important, but then you also have to have the persistence to keep working to make progress. And I always tell young people to have big dreams, but then also be willing to work for those dreams. It's not going to come right away.
Barack Obama
In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination -- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the March. For the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract ideal. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice, not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can't afford the meal? This idea -- that one's liberty is linked to one's livelihood; that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new. Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms -- as a promise that in due time, "the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”.
Barack Obama
I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.
Barack Obama
That's why tonight I ask every American who knows someone without health insurance to help them get covered by March 31st. Help them get covered. Moms, get on your kids to sign up. Kids, call your mom and walk her through the application. It'll give her some peace of mind, and plus, she'll appreciate hearing from you. After all, that -- that's the spirit that has always moved this nation forward. It's the spirit of citizenship, the recognition that through hard work and responsibility, we can pursue our individual dreams, but still come together as one American family to make sure the next generation can pursue its dreams as well.
Barack Obama
America does not ask us to be perfect. Precisely because of our individual imperfections, our founders gave us institutions to guard against tyranny and ensure no one is above the law; a democracy that gives us the space to work through our differences and debate them peacefully, to make things better, even if it doesn't always happen as fast as we'd like. America gives us the capacity to change.
Barack Obama
Look at what happened in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast when Katrina hit. People ask me whether they thought race was the reason the response was so slow. I say, "well, no, this administration was colorblind in its incompetence." But, everyone here knows that the disaster and the poverty happened long before the hurricane hit.
Barack Obama
One election will not fix everything that needs to be fixed, but it will be a start. And you have to start it. What's going to fix our democracy is you. People ask me, what are you going to do for the election? No, the question is: what are you going to do? You're the antidote. Your participation and your spirit and your determination, not just in this election but in every subsequent election, and in the days between elections.
Barack Obama
But how can we in good conscience justify war before we've tested a diplomatic agreement that achieves our objectives; that has been agreed to by Iran; that is supported by the rest of the world; and that preserves our options if the deal falls short? How could we justify that to our troops? How could we justify that to the world or to future generations? In the end, that should be a lesson that we've learned from over a decade of war. On the front end, ask tough questions. Subject our own assumptions to evidence and analysis. Resist the conventional wisdom and the drumbeat of war. Worry less about being labeled weak; worry more about getting it right.
Barack Obama
And we have done more in the two and a half years that I've been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it's ending "don't ask, don't tell," making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.
Barack Obama
Britain's victories are barren; they leave her poor, and they leave her people hungry; they leave her bereft of the markets and the wealth that she possessed six years ago. But above all, they leave her with an immensely greater problem than she had then. We are nearing the end of one phase of Europe's history, but the next will be no happier. It will be grimmer, harder and perhaps bloodier. And now I ask you earnestly, can Britain survive? I am profoundly convinced that without German help she cannot.
William Joyce
If you get typecast, it's up to you to break that. Since I started real young, getting roles where they would ask me to take my clothes off, I would get those [types of] scripts over and over. The fact that I'm still here and working... I don't know if it's so much because of my performances or something else.
Nastassja Kinski
Because our time is struggling toward the word with which it may express its spirit, many names come to the fore and all make claim to being the right one. [...] Without our assistance, time will not bring the right word to light; we must all work together on it. If, however, so much depends on us, we may reasonably ask what they have made of us and what they propose to make of us; we ask about the education through which they seek to make us creators of that word. Do they conscientiously cultivate our predisposition to become creators or do they treat us only as creatures whose nature simply permits training? [...] Therefore we are concerned above all with what they make of us in the time of our plasticity; the school question is a life question.
Max Stirner
