A man's CHARACTER never changes radically from youth to OLD AGE. What HAPPENS is that circumstances bring out characteristics which have not been obvious to the superficial observer.

The rich are not BORN sceptical or cynical. They are made that WAY by EVENTS, CIRCUMSTANCES.

Bravely going out into the world and TRYING, yet STILL deep down believing you're RULED by your past circumstances, is like FORGIVING someone but still hoping they sit in something wet.

Man has throughout the AGES been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare - something we call truth or God or REALITY, a timeless state - something that cannot be disturbed by CIRCUMSTANCES, by THOUGHT or by human corruption.

My own personal popularity can have no influence over me when the dictates of my best JUDGMENT and the OBLIGATIONS of an oath require of me a particular course. Under such circumstances, WHETHER I sink or SWIM on the tide of popular favor is, to me, a matter of inferior consideration.

I am tremendously INSPIRED by many women AROUND the world who work under dire circumstances to MAKE a DIFFERENCE for their families.

We're all born into whatever citizenship, circumstances, or CLASS we HAPPEN to be born into. Immigrants and so many people in the working class work so hard EVERY day for nickels and pennies and scraps to just barely get by and then REALIZE that this precious life has been completely drained out of us.

It is ABSOLUTELY impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can CHANGE in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws EXPOSE themselves.

The main way that being adopted has SHAPED my songwriting is that I was asked at an EARLY age to consider the CIRCUMSTANCES that led to my life, and in a way, I was introduced to how fragile and unlikely life is from the BEGINNING.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you MUST DECIDE not to be reduced. You have your HUMANITY, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to KNOW we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

You can't ALWAYS CHANGE your CIRCUMSTANCES, but you can change the WAY you EXPERIENCE them.

The symptoms of fascist THINKING are colored by environment and adapted to immediate CIRCUMSTANCES. But always and EVERYWHERE they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the DESIRE to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.