Judy Woodruff
Vaclav Havel had this great sense of humor. And you kind of felt that he was making a little bit fun of everything at the same time.Collection: Fun
He [Vaclav Havel] did love music. And so much about the Czech revolution was about music.Collection: Revolution
That was an exception within the [Barack] Obama administration's economic policy, a crisis that he inherited from the previous administration, and felt it was essential to carry through on.Collection: Essentials
What will be interesting to see is whether or not we see from the [Donald Trump] administration initiatives on higher education for this work force, because if those kinds of training opportunities are not provided, then I do think this program begins to look like a defensive holding action, a rear-guard action, buying time for workers who might not otherwise find positions in the 21st century.Collection: Opportunity
One can understand the politics of that at this moment. It's an effort to buy time for a constituency of workers who have really been suffering in the last 20 years, and who need to be prepared and be given time to prepare for a transition to a very different type of employment that we may moving on to in the coming decades.Collection: Moving
In some senses, I think it's almost deliberately anachronistic. There's a retro feel to the [Donald] Trump program.Collection: Thinking
That is certainly the promise of [Donald Trump] campaign and the promise of his economic program.This economic program is really the pickup truck of economic programs. It's the Ford F-150 of economic programs. It's about manufacturing. It's about oil, fossil fuels. It's a deliberate, forceful reassertion of an image of American industrialism that we have inherited from the 20th century.Collection: Oil
I think, as a historian, what strikes one the most about this [Donald'd Trump] program is just simply its nationalism, with his commitment to the redevelopment of American manufacturing and industrial jobs, providing jobs for the constituency that was so important in electing him.Collection: Jobs
The N-word is one of the most contentious words in the English language.Collection: Language
So many times, white - non-college-education - educated white males have voted Republican. They voted against their own economic interests because of guns, because of gays, and because of God, the three G's, God being the woman's right to choose.Collection: Gay
I don't think anyone is closer to the voters in Washington than members of the House of Representatives.Collection: Thinking
I think he [Vaclav Havel] felt that he could speak more truth, in a way, through writing plays.Collection: Writing
Vaclav Havel had moral stature. The president in first Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic in many ways is a ceremonial role. And so, speaking out and having that strong moral fiber, people just knew that he told the truth to people who had only heard lies. And so I think his - that's his legacy.Collection: Strong
I think he [Vaclav Havel] is one of the great figures of the 20th century. He is one of the people that was able to be a part of overthrowing a dictatorial system by talking to people and understanding what the elements of democracy really are and respect for each other and elevating.Collection: Thinking
Historically, when times are bad, voters, especially in the Industrial Midwest, have turned to the Democrats.Collection: Midwest
Girl Scouts offered a wonderful group of girls where common concerns and interests could come together. We could learn, be challenged, and support one another. It was a very positive aspect of my life and played an important role in shaping who I am today.Collection: Girl
He was a lifelong Republican, but over the years, Harry Blackmun built a reputation as a liberal, sometimes defiant Justice, whose fierce protection of individual rights led some to anoint him the moral conscience of the court.Collection: Years
Donald Trump rejected charges of ties between his campaign and Russia, blasted the intelligence community for leaks, and repeatedly attacked the news media. The president said he inherited a mess at home and abroad, but he dismissed the notion of a White House in turmoil.Collection: Home
Machines are on track to be on par with human intelligence in less than 15 years.Collection: Years
Every president feels that he has gotten unfair, dishonest coverage from the news media.Collection: Media
What I think the appeal of the [Donald] Trump program has been is that it offers some kind of concrete, specific, historically rooted, a familiar image of how ordinary Americans, regular Americans can earn their living.Collection: Thinking
When it comes to economics, president-elect [Donald] Trump has promised to revive American manufacturing, get tough on trade with China, cut taxes and invest in infrastructure.Collection: Cutting
Raising children is a journey generously sprinkled with what many view as teachable moments, perhaps none as challenging as those surrounding faith and religion.Collection: Children
In my book ["Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age], I argue that we're vulnerable to technologies.There's a 40 percent decline in all markers for empathy among college students, with most of it taking place in the past years.Collection: Book
It's very typical that when two people are having lunch, they put a phone on the table between them.Collection: Phones
Despite the vast expanse of shoreline in this country, more than 90 percent of the seafood Americans eat is imported.Collection: Country
At work, conversation increases productivity. And yet people go into work, put on their headphones. In one interview, somebody called it - they become pilots in their own cockpits.Collection: People
I think even Republicans are saying [Andrew] Puzder may have a problem.Collection: Thinking
The president-elect Donald Trump moved a bit closer to getting his Cabinet in place with another round of confirmation hearings. The most contentious was for his treasury secretary pick, Steven Mnuchin, a billionaire banker who worked at Goldman Sachs and owned a hedge fund. There was important news that came out during the hearing. Mnuchin said that he would support raising the debt ceiling sooner rather than later, and not risk the country defaulting.Collection: Country
I think there's a fundamental moral issue about whether it's right for a machine to decide to kill a person. It's bad enough that people are deciding to kill people, but at least they have perhaps some moral argument that they're doing it to ultimately defend their families or prevent some greater evil.Collection: Thinking
AFSCME stands for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.Collection: States
Senate races are different from House races, in the sense that they are more candidate-driven. The higher the office - that is, I mean, governor, senator, president - the more important the candidate.Collection: Mean
Now it's become sort of a - you know, just sort of a casual thing, and you can vote any time at all. It doesn't increase turnout. It hasn't increased turnout, really. And I don't think it's a healthy development. I sound like an old fogey here.Collection: Thinking
You know what the Russians are saying is that they have an historic relationship with - with Crimea, and they're saying the Crimean legislature has voted now to have a referendum, and they're saying what the government in Kiev did was illegal.Collection: Historic
Trump said today that if countries are going to have nuclear weapons, then he said the United States needs to be at the top of the back, in his words, meaning increasing the U.S. nuclear arsenal.Collection: Country
People want jobs, but nobody has a recipe for how to get them. And so they are trying different things.Collection: Jobs
I think that, from Vaclav Havel own experience, he knew if we all paid attention to what was going on, the chances were that even the most horrible dictators wouldn't execute people.Collection: Thinking
The system was afraid of Vaclav Havel. And so they either harassed him for put him in jail.Collection: Jail
Vaclav Havel was the most amazing man in terms of being the combination of somebody with massive moral authority, great courage for having espoused the concepts of democracy, freedom throughout a very difficult communist period, a very modest man, and somebody with a fabulous sense of humor and the idea of being able to see the absurd in situations.Collection: Men
I knew that Vaclav Havel didn't want to look into people's eyes, because he said that, when he was being interrogated during the communist period and had been taken to jail, that, if you look directly into somebody's eyes, they can persuade you. And so you can see that so clearly in this interview, where he's looking down.And I kept saying to him as we kept coming - came over here: " You have to look up."And I clearly had no influence on him.Collection: Taken
This is naturally the most important thing, the dark traces left by the era of totalitarianism in the human mind, where is - are difficult to do away with. And this is a very demanding job.Collection: Jobs
Of course, man is also a weak creature with many bad qualities. And it depends on which of his qualities will in a certain social situation and in a certain climate prevail, which qualities will awaken. The totalitarian system was masterful in how it managed to mobilize all the bad qualities.Collection: Men
I have no doubt about it. I think this is a part of the nature of man, a desire for freedom, for dignified life.Collection: Men
That's one of the surprises in the research, that's it's not young people who are smitten with their phones. It's their parents who are not paying attention to them.Collection: Phones
Our phones do play to our natural nervousness about being vulnerable to each other, but that doesn't mean that we can't we can't pull ourselves together, and say - we need to talk to each because it's in conversation, the most human and humanizing thing that we do, that empathy is born, that intimacy is born, that relationship is born.Collection: Mean
In the study, 89 percent of Americans said that they interrupted their last social encounter by looking at a phone. And 82 percent of them said that it deteriorated the conversation.Collection: Phones
If you're using technology in a way that opens out conversation in your family, with your friends, with people you care about, I'm for that. But if you're using technology to silence the conversations with the people around you, then you have to create sacred spaces in your home, the kitchen, the dining room, the car.Collection: Home
Create sacred spaces in the workplace as well. Classrooms, five years ago, professors would say, I don't want be a nanny to my students. They can do whatever they want. Now professors are saying, put away that laptop, because studies show that it not only takes away the attention of the person who's on the laptop from the class, but everyone around them. There's like a circle around that person that's distracted and not paying attention.Collection: Years
Young people realize that something is amiss. There's a generation that fell in love with their phones, and it's very hard for them to see that there's a problem. But young people are desperate for the attention of their parents, who are really not paying attention to them.Collection: Phones