There is no question that al-Qaida operatives are currently active in Iraq. A premature exit before the threat they represent has been dealt with would endanger America and the prospects of eventual peace in the Middle East.
You have to look at the history of the Middle East in particular. It has been one of failure and frustration, of feudalism and tribalism.
Everybody gets everything handed to them. The rich inherit it. I don’t mean just inheritance of money. I mean what people take for granted among the middle and upper classes, which is nepotism, the old-boy network.
The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people’s perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world – to be accepted.
‘Reinventing the Bazaar,’ by John McMillan, is a great and fun introduction to the wild variety and importance of markets throughout history and around the world. I finally understood how a Middle Eastern souk actually works economically and how to compare that to modern-day telecom-spectrum auctions. I love that book.
In the middle of my third Hollywood picture The Magician, the earthquake hit Hollywood. Not the real earthquake. Just the talkies.
One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.
According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.
One of the most beautiful things about Shakespeare’s Hamlet is when he stops in the middle of the play to ask, ‘To be or not to be?’ Then, right at the end, he decides to ‘let be.’ The first season of ‘Stranger Things’ was Hopper asking whether ‘to be or not to be’ and the second is to ‘let be.’
When you have both parties who will not find ways to compromise, who won’t meet in the middle, you have paralysis. It’s the perversion of idealism.
I’m a contemporary artist with a bit of an unexpected background. I was in my 20s before I ever went to an art museum. I grew up in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road in rural Arkansas, an hour from the nearest movie theater.
The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity.
I toured the Middle Eastern countries with the ballet.
I have to go with the approach I had in Triple-A. I need to take a lot of those fastballs I am seeing to left field. Also must gear up for the changeup and take them up the middle.
My middle school years were defined by memorizing every single word off ‘License to Ill’ and ‘Paul’s Boutique.’
In Philadelphia, our public safety, poverty reduction, health and economic development all start with education. We can’t grow the middle class if we don’t give our kids the tools they need to innovate and invent.
In every society, manufacturing builds the lower middle class. If you give up manufacturing, you end up with haves and have-nots, and you get social polarization. The whole lower middle class sinks.
Latinos are concerned about the same pocketbook issues that matter to most middle class Americans – creating good-paying jobs in this country, making sure our children get a quality education, and ensuring that our families have access to affordable and quality healthcare.
The longer I spent time on ‘The Daily Show,’ standing in front of a green screen pretending to report from war zones and hot spots around the world – most often from somewhere in the Middle East – the more I began to realize that ‘The Daily Show’ was radicalizing me.
I want to go and go, and then drop dead in the middle of something I’m loving to do. And if that doesn’t happen, if I wind up sitting in a wheelchair, at least I’ll have my high heels on.
I’m either shooting nine grams of coke a day or spending two hours at the gym. There’s no middle ground.
I really believe that’s one of the many reasons that God had put me right in the middle of the Backstreet Boys. There are so many stars today that don’t realize the impact they have on young people. Being a superstar is great, as long as you can be a positive role model.
I got canceled in the middle of making the pilot.
I come from a middle class family, and my parents weren’t too supportive of my career choices.
Fame has not changed me as a person, but life on the whole has changed a lot. I belong to a middle class family and that hasn’t changed.
There’s no such thing as median income; there’s a curve, and it really matters what side of the curve you’re on. There’s no such thing as the middle class. It’s absolutely vanishing.
Before doing fieldwork in Middle Egypt, I analyzed satellite imagery to determine exactly where I wanted to go. Within three weeks, I found about 70 sites. If I had approached this as a traditional foot survey, it would have taken me three and a half years.
I was raised in a very Middle Eastern household, and modesty was very important, and dressing to not be desirable or provocative was very important.
In the ’70s, the newspaper guild managed to get people paid what they were worth, but the reporters suddenly became middle class. It’s much more respectable, more uptight, and everyone speaks in guarded tones. And the writing isn’t as good. We always had guys who were failed poets and failed novelists who did it to eat.
Because of the need to remove all modernism, we stayed in the middle of nowhere all day long, living out of tents. It was cold. It definitely set the scene.
According to the supermarkets, there is no such thing as ‘out of season.’ Berries in the middle of February? Why not? Seafood flown in from Japan? Sure. While it all adds up to appetizing and varied meals throughout the year, regardless of the weather, it comes with a price tag – both ethical and financial.
To fulfill the promise of economic opportunity, we must remain true to the principle that collective bargaining is a cornerstone of a free society and indispensable to a strong middle class.
Any time you play shortstop or center field, the majority of the baseballs are hit in the middle of the field.
I have visited some places where the differences between black and white are not as profound as they used to be, but I think there is a new form of racism growing in Europe and that is focused on people who are Middle Eastern. I see it.
The Great Depression, they come out with the New Deal, black people didn’t have access to those government stimulus packages. The New Deal set up what is known as the modern-day middle class. We didn’t have access to programs – the G.I. Bill, Social Security, home loans – none of that.
I think heterosexuality and homosexuality are a kind of psychosis, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
But my middle daughter, Kate, is very involved in martial arts, and I was just at one of her competitions.
Before there were unions, there was no middle class.
I wish I looked more like my mother, but I think I look like my father. I wish I had one of those naturally beautiful faces. Or a more quirky face. I’m right down the middle: not interesting enough, not pretty enough.
Christians are being persecuted, not just in the Middle East but here in this country.
Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they’ll let it loose and you go, ‘Ah that’s great.’
The time when I had desire to go to the United States I didn’t have a penny. It was in the middle of the depression, you know. I couldn’t get as far as Hoboken at that time.
Reading serves as a good escape when you’re in the middle of doing crazy things.
I’m a typical middle child. I’m the mediator. The one that makes everything OK, puts their own needs aside to make sure everybody’s happy. It’s hard to change your nature, even with years and years of therapy.
The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.
Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.
We need a new generation of leaders who will promote policies that will foster economic growth and alleviate the middle class squeeze, defend America’s national security against those who threaten our people, reform the culture of Washington, D.C., and reassert the constitutional principles that make our country unique.
Several experts on the Middle East concur that the Middle East cannot be democratized.
I grew up in New Mexico, and the older I get, I have less need for contemporary culture and big cities and all the stuff we are bombarded with. I am happier at my ranch in the middle of nowhere watching a bug carry leaves across the grass, listening to silence, riding my horse, and being in open space.
Initially, before the modern state of Iraq was created, there were three separate provinces here: a Shiite in the south, a largely Sunni one in the middle, and a Kurdish one in the north.
I’m getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.
