Next to enjoying ourselves the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves or more generally in the acquisition of power.
Everything is generated through your own will power.
Here at this site Solyndra expects to make enough solar panels each year to generate 500 megawatts of electricity. And over the lifetime of this expanded facility that could be like replacing as many as eight coal-fired power plants.
I think I'm the most positive guy still going in my generation and I'm out there to prove that.
Generally I'm a pretty positive but like any other working person if the jobs aren't coming in I do get depressed.
So the experts think we could have an AIDS-free generation in Africa by 2015 even if the mothers are positive.
I'm big on being positive. I'm generally so positive and happy. I just always felt that I was exactly where I wanted to be. And things have continued to go in great directions.
Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.
But you see our society is still trapped in this binary black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.
I think anytime you can affect people in general in a positive way then you're a lucky individual.
When you're young with less on the line it's easier to be audacious to experiment. So I introduced the concerns of my generation - politics sex drugs rock-and-roll etc. - to the comics page which for many years caused a rolling furor.
The sight of allegedly sophisticated politicians parroting complete tripe trivialises and demeans government and it has to be stopped. It's played a significant part in public disillusionment with politics and has led to the absurd situation where more people vote for 'Strictly Come Dancing' than voted in the general election.
I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.
In general people feel more relaxed about participating in politics. They aren't frightened as they used to be.
Once the cry and the cause of a generation of progressives to make America safer fairer and cleaner 'regulation' is now a dirty word in our politics. Even Democrats are quick to talk about cutting regulations Republicans hate them with - how to put it? - evangelical fervor.
When we are sick we want an uncommon doctor when we have a construction job to do we want an uncommon engineer and when we are at war we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.
Before I went to jail I was active in politics as a member of South Africa's leading organization - and I was generally busy from 7 A.M. until midnight. I never had time to sit and think.
Sometimes I wonder if we shall ever grow up in our politics and say definite things which mean something or whether we shall always go on using generalities to which everyone can subscribe and which mean very little.
The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape?
I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and more especially from her lyrics of the last generation.
PC stuff just lowers the general acceptance of good work and replaces it with bogus poetry that celebrates values that in themselves are probably quite worthy.
And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.
Perhaps there is an idea among Japanese students that one general difference between Japanese and Western poetry is that the former cultivates short forms and the latter longer ones gut this is only in part true.
A very intimate sense of the expressiveness of outward things which ponders listens penetrates where the earlier less developed consciousness passed lightly by is an important element in the general temper of our modern poetry.