Reparations - not just aid - should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and - together with other criminal states - for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.

If black people use their resources properly, they can become as competitive as any group in society - take control of our neighborhoods, our businesses, our schools, including our teachers. The only thing keeping black people from doing it is this idiotic idea about integration, about being racially balanced.

Aphrodite-Venus had become not a subject of adoration, but an agent of exploitation. From the moment Christian society perceived sex not as a gift of the goddess but a crime against God himself, women were believed to be the vessels of love's malign power.

There is no society ever discovered in the remotest corner of the world that has not had something that we would consider the arts. Visual arts - decoration of surfaces and bodies - appears to be a human universal.

But with the steady disintegration of the family in modern society over the last century, the role of the school in bridging the gap has become vital!

'The End of America' details the 10 steps that would-be dictators always take in seeking to close an open society; it argued that the Bush administration had been advancing each one.

The influence of a woman can be very great, especially now, in the present order or disorder of society, in which there is a kind of spiritual chill, a kind of moral fatigue, demanding reanimation. In order to produce this reanimation, the cooperation of woman is indispensable.

It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced.

Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground, one foot nailed to the floor.

We live in a disposable, 'cast-off and throw-away' society that has largely lost any real sense of permanence. Ours is a world of expiration dates, limited shelf life, and planned obsolescence. Nothing is absolute.

The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.

Our society is full of hypocrites and irrational people.

Working with Operation Smile is a completely life-altering experience. It is truly inspiring to be a part of something with so many unique individuals who come together for the greater good of helping others.

From 1975-'79, I worked for PGA professional Tony Bruno. For five years I watched, lost in admiration, as Tony ran the golf shop at Battleground Country Club in Manalapan, N.J. Tony put in 80-hour weeks doing what nearly 29,000 men and women club pros do every day: Keeping the game alive with a smile.

When I hear theists and atheists pontificating on how they know God does or does not exist, I can only smile at the irrationality and, yes, vanity of the notion.

Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.

I'm not the athlete I was when I was training for the Olympics in '92 or when I was working out every single day. I have to live in moderation: I work out three or four days a week, and I smile while I'm working out - I really do enjoy it. I work out with my girlfriends and make it a social competition.

The last time I saw Ted Kennedy was a generation after my first meeting, at the Senate subway below the Capitol on Obama's Inauguration Day. He was his usual gregarious and gracious self - with beaming smile and booming voice wishing my husband and me good luck with our pregnancy and expressing his excitement about the new president.

I love the live performances and Las Vegas. I also like making films that are being discovered by another generation. Having been a teen idol of the '60s is great because you realize you left your generation with a smile and good memories.

I think Operation Smile is in more than 22 countries, mostly Third World. It just happened that my schedule opened up at the time they were heading to Vietnam.

We may smile at these matters, but they are melancholy illustrations.

Jessica Simpson is the youth ambassador for Operation Smile, and an episode of The Apprentice featured a team managing a charity concert she put on. Donald Trump came on stage and pledged a donation.

It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power... it's the goodness.

All of the narration in 'Smile' is first-person. Most of the books that I grew up reading had first-person narrators for some reason. My diaries were written in this voice, and since this story is autobiographical, it just felt like a natural extension.