Quotes about role
page 9

Mao Zedong photo

“In seeking victory, those who direct a war cannot overstep the limitations imposed by the objective conditions. Within these limitations, however, they can and must play a dynamic role in striving for victory. The stage of action for commanders in a war must be built upon objective possibilities, but on that stage they can direct the performance of many a drama, full of sound and color, power and grandeur.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Protracted Warfare (1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 指导战争的人们不能超越客观条件许可的限度期求战争的胜利,然而可以而且必须在客观条件的限度之内,能动地争取战争的胜利。战争指挥员活动的舞台,必须建筑在客观条件的许可之上,然而他们凭借这个舞台,却可以导演出很多有声有色、威武雄壮的戏剧来。

Lucy Lawless photo

“The role was very physically challenging and I am not athletic and have never wanted to be. I hate it in fact. I don't go to gyms and for me to have to stay in shape for the role became mind over matter.”

Lucy Lawless (1968) New Zealand actress

On finishing the last episode of Xena — reported in Kylie Keogh (May 31, 2001) "Xena shoots back", The Daily Telegraph, p. T05.

Francis Escudero photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“Having been Scully for such a long time, I have to prove myself in other roles.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Ric House (July 6, 2001) "New 'X-Files' season will be Anderson's last", The Spokesman-Review, p. D2.
2000s

Kane Hodder photo
Glenn Beck photo

“They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are gonna poke and poke and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it. We must be — we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, "Kill all white babies."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Premiere Radio Networks
2010-07-12
Beck: "They want a race war … and our government is going to stand by and let them do it"
2010-07-12
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201007120021
on The New Black Panther Party
2010s, 2010

“A fifty-seven-year-old college professor expressed it this way: "Yes, there's a need for male lib and hardly anyone writes about it the way it really is, though a few make jokes. My gut reaction, which is what you asked for, is that men—the famous male chauvinist pigs who neglect their wives, underpay their women employees, and rule the world—are literally slaves. They're out there picking that cotton, sweating, swearing, taking lashes from the boss, working fifty hours a week to support themselves and the plantation, only then to come back to the house to do another twenty hours a week rinsing dishes, toting trash bags, writing checks, and acting as butlers at the parties. It's true of young husbands and middleaged husbands. Young bachelors may have a nice deal for a couple of years after graduating, but I've forgotten, and I'll never again be young! Old men. Some have it sweet, some have it sour."Man's role—how has it affected my life? At thirty-five, I chose to emphasize family togetherness and income and neglect my profession if necessary. At fifty-seven, I see no reward for time spent with and for the family, in terms of love or appreciation. I see a thousand punishments for neglecting my profession. I'm just tired and have come close to just walking away from it and starting over; just research, publish, teach, administer, play tennis, and travel. Why haven't I? Guilt. And love. And fear of loneliness. How should the man's role in my family change? I really don't know how it can, but I'd like a lot more time to do my thing."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

In Harness: The Male Condition, pp. 6–7
The Hazards of Being Male (1976)

Jane Roberts photo
Hans Reichenbach photo
El Lissitsky photo
Daniel Kahneman photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Vinod Rai photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
William Foote Whyte photo
Nguyen Khanh photo
Roy Jenkins photo
Michel Foucault photo
Bruce Timm photo
Warren Farrell photo

“A mother’s traditional role prepared her to love her family by being with the family she loved.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Mao Zedong photo
Henri Poincaré photo
Kurt Schuschnigg photo
Naomi Klein photo
Margaret Cho photo
Mark Satin photo
David Graeber photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“I suppose he had the good luck to be executed, no? I had an hour's chat with him in Buenos Aires. He struck me as a kind of play actor, no? Living up to a certain role. I mean, being a professional Andalusian… But in the case of Lorca, it was very strange because I lived in Andalusia and the Andalusians aren't a bit like that. His were stage Andalusians. Maybe he thought that in Buenos Aires he had to live up to that character, but in Andalusia, people are not like that. In fact, if you are in Andalusia, if you are talking to a man of letters and you speak to him about bullfights, he'll say, 'Oh well, that sort of this pleases people, I suppose, but really the torero works in no danger whatsoever. Because they are bored by these things, because every writer is bored by the local color in his own country. Well, when I met Lorca, he was being a professional Andalusian… Besides, Lorca wanted to astonish us. He said to me that he was very troubled about a very important figure in the contemporary world. A character in whom he could see all the tragedy of American life. And then he went on in this way until I asked him who was this character and it turned out this character was Mickey Mouse. I suppose he was trying to be clever. And I thought, 'That's the kind of thing you say when you are very, very young and you want to astonish somebody.' But after all, he was a grown man, he had no need, he could have talked in a different way. But when he started in about Mickey Mouse being a symbol of America, there was a friend of mine there and he looked at me and I looked at him and we both walked away because we were too old for that kind of game, no? Even at that time.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Richard Burgin, Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges, pages 92-93.
Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges (1968)

Elizabeth May photo

“The role of the individual MP has been sidelined by the power of the Cabinet, and now by the PM alone.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

Source: Losing Confidence - Power, politics, And The Crisis In Canadian Democracy (2009), Chapter 2, Parliament as Anachronism?, p. 54

Margaret Mead photo
Gloria Estefan photo

“Who is Gloria Estefan today? I'm very fulfilled as a woman. I've been able to have a wonderful family life, a fantastic career. I have a lot of good friends around me. My family has been my grounding point, and rooted me deeply to the earth... I'm very happy. I've done everything I ever wanted to do. The key to me was -- I told my husband when we were in our 20s -- I'm going to work really hard, so one day I won't have to work so hard. And to me what that was, was having choices. And I do have choices now -- and I have take full advantage of that. It's important for me now to be here for my little girl [Emily, age 12]. My son is full grown -- and I know have quickly that goes. So, I'm balancing being a mother -- which to me is the most important role I have on this earth -- and still being creative, writing -- which is what I love to do. So, I've been able to branch out into not just writing songs like you have heard through the years -- but writing children's books, writing a screenplay. But at my core that's what I am: a writer. And that's what I enjoy doing behind the scenes: writing the songs for albums, recording it. And that's why you have seen me take more of a back seat to being the center of attention, and being out on tour and doing that kind of thing. I've stepped up a lot of my charity work. This year, the five concerts I did were all for charity: different ones and my own foundation. So, that's becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life -- as I wanted it to be. And [I keep] just growing and evolving.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007

David Davis photo

“There is a proper role for referendums in constitutional change, but only if done properly. If it is not done properly, it can be a dangerous tool. The Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, who is no longer in the Chamber, said that Clement Attlee—who is, I think, one of the Deputy Prime Minister's heroes—famously described the referendum as the device of demagogues and dictators. We may not always go as far as he did, but what is certain is that pre-legislative referendums of the type the Deputy Prime Minister is proposing are the worst type of all. ¶ Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgment. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge. ¶ We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.”

David Davis (1948) British Conservative Party politician and former businessman

House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 26 November 2002, column 201 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2002-11-26.201.7
On democracy and referendums

A. R. Rahman photo
Paul Newman photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo
Shahrukh Khan photo

“The essence is that I leave something of me in every role — not 100 per cent.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Amrita Mulchandani

André Maurois photo

“In the United States, international business still means the U. S. and the rest of the world. Here it is different. We wanted to learn about the reality of international business and understand the role and scope of strategy within that.”

Renée Mauborgne American economist

Renée Mauborgne in: Stuart Crainer, " W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne: The Thought Leader Interview http://www.strategy-business.com/article/11695?gko=d33f3," strategy+business, January 12, 2002. First Quarter 2002. Issue 26 (originally published by Booz & Company)

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

Mitt Romney photo
A. J. Liebling photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Ruhollah Khomeini photo

“The biological organism and the social persona are profoundly different social constructions. The different systems of social practices, including discourse practices, through which these two notions are constituted, have their meanings, and are made use of, are radically incommensurable. The biological notion of a human organism as an identifiable individual unit of analysis depends on the specific scientific practices we use to construct the identity, the boundedness, the integrity, and the continuity across interactions of this unit. The criteria we use to do so: DNA signatures, neural micro-anatomy, organism-environment boundaries, internal physiological interdependence of subsystems, external physical probes of identification at distinct moments of physical time -- all depend on social practices and discourses profoundly different from those in terms of which we define the social person.
The social-biographical person is also an individual insofar as we construct its identity, boundedness, integrity, and continuity. But the social practices and discourses we deploy in these constructions are quite different. We define the social person in terms of social interactions, social roles, socially and culturally meaningful behavior patterns. We construct from these notions of the personal identity of an individual the separateness and independence of that individual from the social environment with which it transacts, the internal unity or integrity of the individual as a consistent persona, and the continuity of that persona across social interactions.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 68

Vyjayanthimala photo
Betty Friedan photo

“Cary Grant roles are ones I would love to have played, but I was never given any.”

Ian Carmichael (1920–2010) actor

Associated Press obituary 8 February 2010 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlzdX4EHkShqZYk3U2TEp_YHkjLgD9DO2PH01

Gianfranco Fini photo
Jane Roberts photo

“Looking back now, it's easy to see that I had no models for the socially accepted conventional female role, which was certainly a blessing.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 44

Catharine A. MacKinnon photo
Sukarno photo
William Lane Craig photo
Carroll Baker photo
Al Gore photo

“Associated with each office is a set of activities, which are defined as potential behaviors. These activities constitute the role to be performed, at least approximately, by any person who occupies that office.”

Robert L. Kahn (1918–2019) American psychologist

Source: Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity, 1964, p. 13: Definition of the term role.

Bell Hooks photo

“The understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations of the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young, middle class, white women. When I entered my first women's studies class at Stanford University in the early 1970s, white women were revelling in the joy of being together-to them it was an important, momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not been together, where women had not helped, protected, and loved one another deeply. I had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness (Southern white women often have a more realistic perspective on racism and classism than white women in other areas of the United States.) I did not feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experiences of black women. Despite my background (living in racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives of white women, and certainly no white women lived in our neighborhood, attended our schools, or worked in our homes When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude towards me and other non-white participants. The condescension they directed at black women was one of the means they employed to remind us that the women's movement was "theirs"-that we were able to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it; after all, we were needed to legitimate the process. They did not see us as equals. And though they expected us to provide first hand accounts of black experience, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences were authentic. Frequently, college-educated black women (even those from poor and working class backgrounds) were dismissed as mere imitators. Our presence in movement activities did not count, as white women were convinced that "real" blackness meant speaking the patois of poor black people, being uneducated, streetwise, and a variety of other stereotypes. If we dared to criticize the movement or to assume responsibility for reshaping feminist ideas and introducing new ideas, our voices were tuned out, dismissed, silenced. We could be heard only if our statements echoed the sentiments of the dominant discourse.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, pp. 11-12.

Anne Bancroft photo
Talal Abu-Ghazaleh photo
Warren Farrell photo

“The role of philosophy might be said to be to extend and deepen the self-awareness of mankind.”

Source: Sartre: Romantic Rationalist (1953), Ch. 9, p. 137

Isa Genzken photo

“Because it's exactly this kind of role reversal that I'm interested in, and then it actually makes it a challenge for the viewer. Also, because most artists work in a completely different way.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

Emily Wasik asked Isa here: You once said in an interview, 'I want to animate the viewers, hold a mirror up to them.' Why do you believe it's important to put yourself [as an artist] in the viewer's shoes and create art that transforms them?
after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)

Amir Taheri photo

“It might come as a surprise to many, but the truth is that Islam today no longer has a living and evolving theology. In fact, with few exceptions, Islam’s last genuine theologians belong to the early part of the 19th century. Go to any mosque anywhere, whether it is in New York or Mecca, and you are more likely to hear a political sermon rather than a theological reflection. In the highly politicized version of Islam promoted by Da’esh, al Qaeda, the Khomeinists in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Nigeria, God plays a cameo role at best. Deprived of its theological moorings, today’s Islam is a wayward vessel under the captaincy of ambitious adventurers leading it into sectarian feuds, wars and terrorism. Many, especially Muslims in Europe and North America, use it as a shibboleth defining identity and even ethnicity. A glance at Islam’s history in the past 200 years highlights the rapid fading of theologians. Today, Western scholars speak of Wahhabism as if that meant a theological school. In truth, Muhammad Abdul-Wahhabi was a political figure. His supposedly theological writings consist of nine pages denouncing worship at shrines of saints. Nineteenth-century “reformers” such as Jamaleddin Assadabadi and Rashid Rada were also more interested in politics than theology. The late Ayatollah Khomeini, sometimes regarded as a theologian, was in fact a politician wearing clerical costume. His grandson has collected more than 100,000 pages of his writings and speeches and poetry. Of these, only 11 pages, commenting on the first and shortest verse of the Koran, could be regarded as dabbling in theology, albeit not with great success.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The mad dream of a dead empire that unites Islamic rebels" http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/the-mad-dream-of-a-dead-empire-that-unites-islamic-rebels/, New York Post (June 14, 2014).
New York Post

Earl Holliman photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
Irina Bokova photo
Vincent K. Brooks photo

“We are role models to a lot of young people, not just African Americans and soldiers.”

Vincent K. Brooks (1958) United States general

As quoted in "Who is Brigadier General Vincent Brooks?" http://www.barzey.com/2003/04/who-is-brigadier-general-vincent-brooks.html (April 2003), Barzey

Charles Barkley photo

“I am not a role model.”

Charles Barkley (1963) American basketball player

Series of Nike commercials

Lenny Bruce photo

“The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

referred to by Paul Krassner in Lenny Bruce: Swear to tell the truth 1998 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175844/

Warren Farrell photo
Ammar Nakshawani photo
Perry Anderson photo
Michael Chabon photo
Karanvir Bohra photo

“After 'Kasauti Zindagii Kay', I wanted to do something better and more challenging. There was no point doing any ordinary show. I knew the role of Viraaj was a bigger challenge. But at the same time, I was also scared of people hating me because of the negative role.”

Karanvir Bohra (1982) Indian actor

I was scared of people hating me: Karanvir Bohra http://archive.mid-day.com/entertainment/2012/jun/180612-I-was-scared-of-people-hating-me-Karanvir-Bohra.htm, June 18, 2012

Halle Berry photo

“I get offered varied parts, often super sexy roles. But I still think it's an issue to find the good scripts. It's a myth that you win an Oscar and you get more opportunities, and this doesn't just go for me.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

Will Lawrence (May 22, 2006) "Anything to do with taking off your clothes comes my way", Evening Standard.

Scott Adams photo

“If there is one thing that our role models in this election have taught us, it's that omitting important information is completely different from lying.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

DNRC Newsletter #57, 2004-10-28 http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/newsletter57.html,

Mo Yan photo
Amy Winehouse photo
Halle Berry photo

“Actors always have to fight for the good parts. There are so few good roles written for women each year, and when one is written like this every actress in town covets the role.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

On her role in the film Things We Lost In The Fire — Western Mail staff (February 1, 2008) "From the grave to the cradle", Western Mail.

Anita Sarkeesian photo

“If I am asked about the photographer’s role in our times, the power of the image and so on, I do not want to launch into explanations. I only know that people who know how to look are as rare as those who know how to listen.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, To Seize Life: Interview with Yvonne Baby (1961), p. 45