I've seen a lot of the United States having stayed in so many different cities and towns for work. It's such a strange and fascinating country and instead of learning about it through a textbook I would rather discover its history and traditions and institutions through fiction and nonfiction writers.

A love of books of holding a book turning its pages looking at its pictures and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning.

I thought I was learning about show business. The more painful it was the more important I thought the experience must be. Hating it I convinced myself it must be invaluable.

I've bought pretty much every book ever written about the Alamo and I talk to my friends that I've made over the past 15 20 years. It's just a constant learning and fascinating thing for me.

Just learning that you have MS is such a devastating shock.

Artists working for other artists is all about knowing learning unlearning initiating long-term artistic dialogues making connections creating covens and getting temporary shelter from the storm.

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point you ain't interesting.

I don't think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point you ain't interesting.

The art of leadership... consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.

Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.

We shouldn't be debating whether to deal with the current code by allowing it to be extended or not. We should have a president who shows leadership and comes to Congress and says: 'You know what? We need to reform this whole tax code.'

In the area we're discussing leadership begins on Madison Avenue on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings.

Research has shown that the perceived style of leadership is by far the most important thing to most voters in evaluating officeholders and candidates.

There is no force more liberating than the knowledge that you are fighting for others.

That test should not be about ratings. What should weigh is the knowledge that a public broadcaster delivers programmes that matter.

No one person invented Mulberry. The knowledge that we had to have this floating harbor slowly grew.

But now with the living conditions deteriorating and with the sure knowledge that we are slated for destruction we have been transformed into an implacable army of liberation.

If knowledge and foresight are too penetrating and deep unify them with ease and sincerity.

Research is creating new knowledge.

Knowledge is not eating and we cannot expect to devour and possess what we mean. Knowledge is recognition of something absent it is a salutation not an embrace.

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate and in circulating it can increase in quantity and hopefully in value.

We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.

When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. Now after years of rebuilding our training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women we are graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency.

We're not trying to harass the average American. We need to convert this now to a risk-based system with TSA concentrating and focusing on intelligence on security setting up again the parameters of which we do this.