The African Americans' story is one that seems to be a repeated commitment to a scenario for success and failure. With each failure, the blow is that much more traumatizing until finally one reaches a point where there is to some degree an internalization, skepticism, fatalism, and expectation that it isn't going to work.

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure.

The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail. That is the talisman, the formula, the command of right about face which turns us from failure to success.

In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam's central virtue - the principle of strict equality between human beings, regardless of sex, race, or creed.

A fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.

I am called an environmentalist a lot. But I don't necessarily identify with that word specifically, because of the compartmentalization of the so-called environmental movement.

We're still expecting capitalism to solve problems: 'Maybe if we sell enough oil, we can give some profits to an environmental agency!' Capitalism isn't a moral system.

There is a new wave of environmental consumers I like to call Pocketbook Environmentalists. They're going green primarily because it makes good financial sense, but the fact that it benefits their families' health and the environment also makes them feel good.

I think environmentalists do no service to their cause by taking fundamentalist stances. I am not defending corporate India's track record, but for many environmental problems, there are technological solutions.

The responses that environmentalists evoke - fear, anxiety, numbness, despair - are not helpful, even if they are understandable. It should be fascinating, even enthralling, to be in the milieu of environmental change.

Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.

The environmental effects of the automobile are well known: motor vehicles cause, for example, as much as 75 percent of the noise and 80 percent of the air pollution in our cities, and the industry must face mounting pressure from environmentalists.

By the 1980s, businesses had realized that environmental issues had a price tag. Increasingly, they balked. Reflexively, the anticorporate Left pivoted; Earth Day, erstwhile snow job, became an opportunity to denounce capitalist greed.

In fact, because of their connection to the land, farmers do more to protect and preserve our environment than almost anyone else. They are some of the best environmentalists around.

Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public, and the new is always alarming.

No one is an environmentalist by birth. It is only your path, your life, your travels that awaken you.

Mankind is considered (by the radical environmentalists) the lowest and the meanest of all species and is blamed for everything.

Environmentalism is a form of pagan fundamentalism. These green wackos are fanatics like al-Quaida. Just like them.

Capitalism is always evaluated against dreams. Utopia is a dream. It doesn't exist.

I am a fashion designer. I'm not an environmentalist. When I get up in the morning, number one I'm a mother and a wife, and number two I design clothes. So the main thing I need to do is create, hopefully, exquisitely beautiful, desirable objects for my customer.

People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world!

Whether you like it or not, you're forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don't fear death, I'm a fatalist. I believe when it's your time, that's it. It's the hand you're dealt.