It’s quite similar to guitar solos, only with programming you have to use your brain. The most important thing is that it should have some emotional effect on me, rather than just, ‘Oh, that’s really clever.’

I think he could have made most of the trips and gone to most of the fund-raisers if he would have avoided the partisan rhetoric and talked to the country as President in each of these appearances rather than to the narrow partisan audiences.

The world is full of people who would like nothing better than to spend six hours on a golf course. I would rather be chopping shallots.

I’ve never met or spoken to David Lee Roth, yet it’s rather ironic that even he’s saying Eddie’s lying about things. I’m saying he’s not telling the truth, yet Eddie insists that the two of us are lying! You be the judge.

At the end of your life, it’s friendships, emotions and thoughts that you take with you, rather than what’s in your bank account. So, even though people don’t have a lot here, they are a lot richer in many ways and we can learn from that.

I prefer the rather old and battered, things with character, to the brand new.

There is no other person on the face of this planet that I would rather sit and talk to than my wife.

The starting point for understanding the deterioration in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia lies in Washington rather than Moscow. After 1989, Russia was a defeated power. Despite the fine words and some limited gestures, the Americans have treated it like one. Their policy has been one of encirclement.

We have this culture of financialization. People think they need to make money with their savings rather with their own business. So you end up with dentists who are more traders than dentists. A dentist should drill teeth and use whatever he does in the stock market for entertainment.

It is in the country’s best interest that Tony Blair rather than Michael Howard should form the next government.

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and...

I don’t know what heavy penance I would not have gladly undertaken rather than practice prayer.

God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by the exaction of another act of homicide.

Bind up thy words that they run not riot, and grow wanton, and gather up sins for themselves in too much talking. Let them be rather confined, and held back within their own banks. An overflowing river quickly gathers mud.

A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them.

Group personification obscures, rather than illuminates, important political questions.

I went to India and met some people who had been involved in this guerrilla business, middle-class people who were rather vain and foolish. There was no revolutionary grandeur to it. Nothing.

‘Diversity’ is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other – that is, when they are not killing each other. A ‘diverse,’ peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent.

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn’t an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

I came from rather humble beginnings.

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

Most drama in our lives is really rather squalid.

The Bill of Rights was intended to secure freedom of speech – the freedom of speech of members of parliament to speak freely rather than be at threat of… the threat of an over powerful monarch at the time.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

If leaders in the space program had at its beginning in the 1940s, pointed out the benefits to people on earth rather than emphasizing the search for proof of evolution in space, the program would have saved $100 billion in tax money and achieved greater results.

I don’t want to be a Michael Moore-style artist, which is not to disparage Michael Moore. But he seems rather unsuccessful at winning people over who don’t already agree with him.

There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen.

We see today that there is a growing understanding in the international community that the extremist regime in Tehran is not just Israel’s problem, but rather an issue that the entire international community must grapple with.

All through life I’ve harbored anger rather than expressed it at the moment.

I would rather do movies because I’m very lazy and the hours are much easier.

I would rather exercise than read a newspaper.

They do not learn, fixed in their ways as they are. You are naïve tothink otherwise. It’s an illness, Assassin, for which there is but one cure.’‘You’re wrong. And that’s why you must be put to rest.’‘Am I not unlike those precious books you seek to save? A source of knowledgewith which you disagree? Yet...

So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it.

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

Wilderness is not defined by the absence of certain activities, but rather by the presence of certain unique and invaluable characteristics.

Proactive giving is what you do when you’ve found your passion. It expresses your values, interests and concerns. It engages not just your dollars, but also your mind, time, skills and networks – the philanthropic equivalent of leaning in, rather than leaning back. Most importantly, proactive giving is something you want to do.

I was very much a tomboy. I’ve always been rather outspoken, headstrong, and I’m pretty much that way to this day.

I find the selectivity of erotic love – the choice of this man or this woman – much more intelligible if liking the person is the origin of sexual interest, rather than the other way.

I have a hard time with interviews, because I’d rather hear about the interviewer.

The most difficult book I wrote was the fourth in a series of linked children’s books. It was like pulling teeth because the publisher wanted exactly the same but completely different. I’d much rather just do something completely different, even if there’s a risk of it going wrong.

I am not telling men to step away from speaking for women’s rights; rather, I am focusing on women to be independent to fight for themselves.

I love marriage. I failed at marriage, but I’d rather go into anything with gusto and fail than go into it half-assed.

Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.

We don’t have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.

A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum – the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They’re the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.

I would rather be uncomfortable with the truth than to be lied to in comfort. That’s just my nature.

A free Net may depend on some wisely developed and implemented locks and a community ethos that secures the keys to those locks among groups with shared norms and a sense of public purpose rather than in the hands of one gatekeeper.

And getting married this autumn was certainly an additional incentive to spend rather more time in England.

It’s interesting to fantasize having a man sink his teeth into your neck for sustenance, knowing that it isn’t going to be terribly painful but rather very exciting.

For many Sudanese, it’s for strength they choose to be Christian rather than Muslim. My mum was a Muslim but she became a Christian later.