mixed legacy

"The 'some' of us is not the 'sum' of us."
- Tavis Smiley on the sordid allegations including child pornography.

"the world is already mean enough"

Q: As a kid who was teased so much, how did you navigate yourself beyond that?

A: I taught myself music. I stuck with it. I played all the time. The support was motivating. I rolled with it.

"The 'some' of the man is not the 'sum' of the man."
- Tavis Smiley 

"The philosopher Krishnamurti, of whom I know absolutely nothing, only one quote, (laughter) but it sounds great, says, 'I have died many times,' but that also means that – I mean, he’s putting it modestly, where he’s also saying is I have had the opportunity to reorganize my molecules and gather myself together and recreate myself or refresh myself many times too."

- Sir Ben Kingsley to Tavis Smiley

“Look, if you really have it, if you’ve had an experience of shunya, of emptiness, and really have penetrated the core of what the Buddhist thought is, you’ll be able to express what that is to a fisherman, to someone who’s uneducated."

- Richard Gere

Tavis Smiley: I raise all that to ask what is it about our culture, about our society, that makes that kind of political satire work so well today?

Ed Helms: We are so just rife with hypocrisy, it is all around us. It’s everywhere. It’s not just even in the political forum, it is in the media coverage, the news coverage, of politics is just so abundantly hypocritical at times.

I think that just from my experience on “The Daily Show,” that is what we always looked for. It was never an ideological angle, like how do we skewer the right wing or whatever. It was always who is being hypocritical here.

That is the very foundation of “The Colbert Report” is a character who is so ridiculously hypocritical (laughter) and self-involved that I think that it’s a release valve for fans who are just sort of fed up and angry with all of this hypocrisy around us, and then they get to see a guy like Jon Stewart just nail it, like really surgically dissect why what Barack Obama said in that situation was ludicrously hypocritical, or what Bill O’Reilly said, or whomever.

It’s also fun. There’s a little bit of an innocence to it because at the end of the day it’s just for laughs, and so it has some meaty content and some fun to it.

Glenn Frey: People connect – the songs connect with people, and somebody once said something really interesting to me. They said, “People didn’t just listen to the Eagles. They did things to the Eagles.”

They broke up with their girlfriend, (laughter) they got in a car with a bunch of guys and drove from Chicago to California. They asked somebody out that they never had the nerve to. You know what I’m saying? I think there was a big connection.

We were just trying to be as good as the people we admired. Our goals were not any bigger than that, really, but we did a really good job. We learned how to write songs, we learned how to make records, and we had a unique vocal sound. But I really think it’s the songs, and that’s why we’re still around.

"I know when I’m picking up momentum. I just know it. I just know when I’m around the right people, that things are going to start to work for me."

- Kevin Costner

success

"Not the fastest. Not the smartest. The most adaptable wins in the end."
- Paraphrase of Charles Darwin [1809-1882]

key to success

"When we're victorious, we don't think about failure. But when we fail and make mistakes, we all scrutinize our failures. That's exactly what we shouldn't do. When you're successful, scrutinize your success. Ask how you could've done a lot better."
- Gary Kasparov [born 1963] paraphrased