“I am addicted to traveling and the challenge of learning another culture – of not dragging your culture into someone else’s country, but living their culture. It is one of the greatest ways to live… Go to Egypt or Africa or Croatia and see what it feels like. There’s nothing in the world like that. It grows your soul. You open up as a human being.”
Quincy Jones, musician, composer and entertainment icon, The Omni Hotels Lecture,
Tate Distinguished Lecture Series, Oct. 7
“More Americans today define the American Dream in terms of spiritual fulfillment and living a genuine life as opposed to those who still believe … in the traditional, material American dream. We’re getting accustomed to living in a world of limits. That bodes well for Americans getting along with the rest of the world, for a new direction in foreign policy… (and) in terms of saving the environment.”
John Zogby, president and CEO of the Zogby International polling firm and author of
The Way We’ll Be, ExxonMobil Lecture Series on Ethics in Advertising, Meadows School
of the Arts, Oct. 1
“With everything that’s going on in our lives and society, somehow this elephant has become a symbol to me of the proverbial ‘elephant in the room.’ If people are not moved to protect creatures who are subject to their will, that lack of concern will spread out exponentially to everyone else – other countries, other cultures, other kinds of people.”
Lily Tomlin, actress and comedian who spoke on behalf of Concerned Citizens for Jenny, which advocates that the Dallas Zoo’s lone elephant be moved to a sanctuary in Tennessee,
Oct. 15
“I believe in national service. When I was in the Senate, we wrote a bill that would require any student who had a federal loan to give some type of service in return. I would have the most lucrative benefits go to those students who were willing to sign up for the military. The second level of benefits would be for those in the Guard, Reserves and homeland security, and the third would be for teachers. We have to pay teachers better, and we have to demand the best and the brightest.”
Sam Nunn, former U.S. senator and chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Forces, Turner Construction/Wachovia Tate Student Forum, Sept. 16
“ ‘Illegal alien’ is a really inflammatory phrase. Are people illegal? People tell me, ‘My family were immigrants, but they came here legally.’ And I have to ask, ‘Who checked the papers? Crazy Horse? Geronimo?’ We’re all visitors to this continent in one way or another. I think Americans have to remember that we are a family first, and if we talk to each other, instead of yell at each other, we come to solutions.”
Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil’s Highway, SMU’s 2008 Common Reading for first-year students, Gartner Honors Lecture, Dedman College, Sept. 8