The characteristic of SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS is our KNOWING that we did not KNOW.

I like conflicts. I love COMPETITION. I like discovering things for myself. It's a childlike characteristic, actually. But that GIVES you a certain AMOUNT of power, and people are intimidated by that.

The great trap for non-American actors trying to play Americans, I think, is to START thinking of American-ness as a characteristic. It isn't. It is no more a CHARACTER TRAIT than height. It is just a PHYSICAL FACT, and that's all there is to it.

Modernism in other arts brought extreme difficulty. In poetry, the characteristic difficulty imported under the name of modernism was obscurity. But obscurity COULD just as easily be a quality of metrical as of FREE VERSE.

I always think about race as a PART of one's IDENTITY, not the WHOLE of one's identity. You don't WANT it to be the defining characteristic of a character. There has to be more.

For a BIRD, especially for the more musically inventive, SONG is the DEFINING characteristic, the primary way by which it KNOWS itself and is known by others. To lose its species song is to lose not just its identity but some part of its presence in the world.

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a MATTER of joy, as if SOMEONE returned from physical disability to good physical health. One aspect of this is that rationality of THOUGHT imposes a LIMIT on a person's concept of his relation to the COSMOS.

It is so characteristic, that just when the MECHANICS of reproduction are so vastly IMPROVED, there are fewer and fewer PEOPLE who KNOW how the music should be played.

I have a strong POINT of view, and that's a double-edged sword. It can be a phenomenal characteristic in TERMS of GETTING THINGS DONE, but it can also mean I will be relentless in my pushing for my point of view.

We regard intelligence as man's MAIN characteristic and we KNOW that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on US, no INFERIORITY for which it cannot compensate.

Although engineers WANT always to make everything BETTER, they cannot make anything perfect. This basic characteristic flaw of the products of the profession's practitioners is what drives CHANGE and MAKES achievement a process RATHER than simply a goal.