“Cary Grant roles are ones I would love to have played, but I was never given any.”
Associated Press obituary 8 February 2010 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlzdX4EHkShqZYk3U2TEp_YHkjLgD9DO2PH01
Statement to Delia DeLeon in 1948, as quoted in How A Master Works (1975) by Ivy Oneita Duce, p. 457.
General sources
Context: I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play, but in the spiritual arena there are people who are even closer to me than that.
Context: I don't usually explain about Mehera to anyone. But I will tell you this. Don't you think I love Mani? Well, Mehera plays the same role to me that the Virgin Mary played to Jesus. She is like my skin — she protects, she feels every thought I feel. But I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play, but in the spiritual arena there are people who are even closer to me than that.
“Cary Grant roles are ones I would love to have played, but I was never given any.”
Associated Press obituary 8 February 2010 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlzdX4EHkShqZYk3U2TEp_YHkjLgD9DO2PH01
Source: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey
Jidderee vun eis ass, an der Mooss vun sengen Mëttelen, dozou opgeruff selwer Akteur ze sinn, an dem e säi Liewen an d’Hand hëlt, mee och an dem en sech fir déi aner engagéiert...eng profund Wourecht, an zwar dass Jiddereen an der Gesellschaft eng Roll ze spillen huet, déi säin eegent Schicksal iwwertrëfft.
Christmas message http://www.monarchie.lu/fr/actualites/discours/2014/12/discours-noel-lu/index.html (25 December 2014)
Society
“All of us have a role to play in shaping society.”
At his speech in Moria, on 3 April 1994
African National Congress (ANC Historical Documents Archive). Johannesburg, South Africa.
1990s, Speech at the Zionist Christian Church Easter Conference (1994)
Context: “Why is it that in this day and age, human beings still butcher one another simply because they dared to belong to different religions, to speak different tongues, or belong to different races? Are human beings inherently evil? What infuses individuals with the ego and ambition to so clamour for power that genocide assumes the mantle of means that justify coveted ends? These are difficult questions, which, if wrongly examined can lead one to lose faith in fellow human beings. And there is where we would go wrong. Firstly, because to lose faith in fellow humans is, as the Archbishop would correctly point out, to lose faith in God and in the purpose of life itself. Secondly, it is erroneous to attribute to the human character a universal trait it does not possess – that of being either inherently evil or inherently humane. I would venture to say that there is something inherently good in all human beings, deriving from, among other things, the attribute of social consciousness that we all possess. And, yes, there is also something inherently bad in all of us, flesh and blood as we are, with the attendant desire to perpetuate and pamper the self. From this premise arises the challenge to order our lives and mould our mores in such a way that the good in all of us takes precedence. In other words, we are not passive and hapless souls waiting for manna or the plague from on high. All of us have a role to play in shaping society.”
On her early married life with her first husband Ben Hagman, p. 39
My Heart Belongs (1976)
As quoted in "Angie Davidson Interviews Elaine Paige" by Angie Davidson in lupus.org.uk (2005)
Source: 1970s, Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View, 1970, p. 2
The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are
Context: The oldest answers to the most basic questions about how to operate are common to virtually every culture on the planet, because at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order -- especially this kind: (James Burke displays a wedding ring.) This is one of those things in life we protect most against being changed when knowledge changes us. We protect it by turning it into a ritual. When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is. The people doing it are effectively saying, "No matter what else may change, we won't rock the boat! We're not maverick. You can trust us." Expressions of approval follow. Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it. They include something from an ancient rite -- in this case, the old symbol of fertility: the ring. And then, it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being: a God. So, the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution if you broke your promise later on. Some things, this ritual says, must be permanent.