You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world.

Just as the Security Council was largely irrelevant to the great struggle of the last half of the twentieth century - freedom against Communism - so too it is largely on the sidelines in our contemporary struggles against international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it even as a temporary measure is to betray it.

Maya Angelou the famous African American poet historian and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

Because I didn't have brothers I was always interested in the kids down the street that had four brothers in their family so I became one of them - but it was not my family. I've always been attracted to temporary families. They tend to be lost characters.

Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success it enables you to ignore the minor hurts the opponent's pressure and the temporary failures.

Failure should be our teacher not our undertaker. Failure is delay not defeat. It is a temporary detour not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing doing nothing and being nothing.

Before success comes in any man's life he's sure to meet with much temporary defeat and perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That's exactly what the majority of men do.

With 'Bright Star' and with 'The Piano ' too I felt a kind of sadness about it being in such a different era because of my lack of experience with the era. And one of the ways I'd get over it is to remind myself that every film even if it's contemporary creates its own world.

America is an idea. And it's the solemn responsibility of each 'temporary' president to protect and nurture that noblest of all ideas - with integrity. This man Mitt Romney has shown - not through his experience but through his actions and words - that he is unqualified to carry out that responsibility.

We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.

At every turn when humanity is asked the question 'Do you want temporary economic gain or long-term environmental loss which one do you prefer ' we invariably choose the money.

In the environmental movement every time you lose a battle it's for good but our victories always seem to be temporary and we keep fighting them over and over again.

So when I got to be about 13 or 14 I started listening - even though my parents music was way cool - to contemporary hard rock at that time which was Aerosmith Cheap Trick Black Sabbath AC/DC Ted Nugent and all that and that's just where I came from.

Forget about the consequences of failure. Failure is only a temporary change in direction to set you straight for your next success.

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.

One way or another we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life and dedicate ourselves to that.

Beauty is only temporary but your mind lasts you a lifetime.

I think it has other roots has to do in part with a general anxiety in contemporary life... nuclear bombs inequality of possibility and chance inequality of goods allotted to us a kind of general racist unjust attitude that is pervasive.

I was very much into buying contemporary art but I've just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it's not great art but all of a sudden my mood has changed and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection the bar has been set pretty low.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art but by no means all seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.