Personally, I can't see the appeal in trekking down to D.C. for a networking extravaganza, even if it is built around a special moment in American history. While I find the election of Barack Obama inspirational, I don't have a desire to memorialize it with overly effusive celebration.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.

As we celebrate International Women's Day, it's not enough to applaud the contributions of women worldwide. We should also recognize and celebrate the opportunities and financial independence women enjoy because of entrepreneurial capitalism.

States that have experienced revolutions or have acquired their independence from empires - such as the U.S. or Australia - tend to celebrate their constitutional documents and put them on show in special galleries so that every citizen can become familiar with them. In the U.K., this is not properly done.

When we celebrate American independence, we are celebrating the best sense of an idea, a process in process.

We have had in our nation a well-celebrated Declaration of Independence. But our success as a country will depend upon a new 'Declaration of Inter-dependence.' A belief in how much we need each other, how much we share one common destiny.

The only holiday of independence which I can never leave out is the celebration of the independence of the Jewish State of Israel.

I am going to take something I learned over in Israel. Their Independence Day is preceded the 24 hours before with Memorial Day, so it gives them a chance to serve and reflect and then celebrate. I am going to try to start that tradition here in America.

While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule, the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and political chaos.

The official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise.

After all these years of Independence, after celebrating this special occasion for all these years, why there's no drinking water that's free of cost? Why we have to buy packaged mineral water?

Maharashtrians in America have a Maharashtra mandal every year. You know when they celebrate it? On July 4, the American Independence Day. That's respect for local culture.

The Grateful Dead, they're my best friends. Their message of hope, peace, love, teamwork, creativity, imagination, celebration, the dance, the vision, the purpose, the passion all of the things I believe in makes me the luckiest Deadhead in the world.

I love our shared island, our shared Ireland and its core decency. I love it for its imagination and its celebration of the endless possibilities for our people.

I came into the 'Comedy Bang! Bang!' TV show with a level of confidence that I don't think I would've had if I hadn't been doing the podcast for three years already. I certainly had to figure out in those three years the sense of humor I wanted to do and the way to talk to celebrities without being incredibly intimidated by them.

Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.

I always felt different as a kid, and the Kinks were like, 'Yeah, we're the Kinks.' Celebrate your difference; don't be afraid of your sense of humor, or your personality, or who you are. It emboldened me.

Even celebrities, most people have a sense of humor. Most of the people we meet who we've done on the show, like it.

When the soldiers came home from Vietnam, there were no parades, no celebrations. So they built the Vietnam Memorial for themselves.

I'm home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.

All I did was pray to God, every day. In prison camp, the main prayer was, 'Get me home alive, God, and I'll seek you and serve you.' I came home, got wrapped up in the celebration, and forgot about the hundreds of promises I'd made to God.

As we celebrate Black History Month we should be grateful for the achievements they made and inspired by their legacies to continue their work.

In our culture, many of us idealize love. We see it as some lofty cure-all for all of life's problems. Our movies and our stories and our history all celebrate it as life's ultimate goal, the final solution for all of our pain and struggle. And because we idealize love, we overestimate it. As a result, our relationships pay a price.

If you look at the paintings that I love in art history, these are the paintings where great, powerful men are being celebrated on the big walls of museums throughout the world. What feels really strange is not to be able to see a reflection of myself in that world.