In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty.

I want people to use Perl. I want to be a positive ingredient of the world and make my American history. So whatever it takes to give away my software and get it used that's great.

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.

If you're not making mistakes then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes.

On the mountains mistakes are fatal. In politics mistakes are wounding emotionally but you recover. Personally wilderness helps me get back in touch with natural rhythms helps me reflect and in the process restore my creativity.

Every person has only so much attention to give and politics and government takes up only a fraction of what it did 25 years ago.

Being out and about talking to residents and representing their views is in my view as important to politics as the grandstanding that takes place in Westminster.

Once you start saying 'Let's talk political my own politics my own aspirations ' it can become not just distracting in that it takes time but it can become confusing and frustrating and is this now a political agenda or a governmental agenda.

I never got into politics for it to be a career. It doesn't take a lot of strength to hang on. It takes a lot of strength to let go.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.