"The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.“

-Anna Deavere Smith

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Anna Deavere Smith quote about future: "The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The l..."

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"I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it."

-Anna Deavere Smith

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"When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not."

-Anna Deavere Smith

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"My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better."

-Anna Deavere Smith

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"To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture."

-Anna Deavere Smith

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"Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other."

-Anna Deavere Smith

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"Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends."

-Anna Deavere Smith

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"I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show."

-Rickie Lee Jones

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"Our challenge for the future is that we realize we are very much a part of the earth's ecosystem, and we must learn to respect and live according to the basic biological laws of nature."

-Jim Fowler

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"There was a certain point in my life where I had to decide that I was going to take my future and Nicole's and not wallow in what happened to me because when you do that, you just keep repeating what's been happening and at some point you have to make a choice."

-Boris Kodjoe

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"If we are to garner sustained U.S. domestic support for future trade agreements, we have to make sure those Americans who have suffered as a consequence of past agreements have an effective social safety net, adjustment assistance, opportunities for retraining and new job creation that enables all Americans to thrive."

-Susan Rice

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"And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe."

-Clifford D. Simak

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"The Nuclear Security Summit was President Obama's initiative born out of his vision to leave behind a safer, more prosperous world for the future generation."

-Lee Myung-bak

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