This is not the time for partisan bickering. This is not the time for politics as usual. Some of us are Democrats. Some of us are Republicans. Some of us are Independents. Above all we must be Oklahomans first.

My philosophy comes from a worldview that looks at the world as one. It's a holistic view that sees the world as interconnected and interdependent and integrated in so many different ways which informs my politics.

I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live.

War is not an independent phenomenon but the continuation of politics by different means.

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake art that stands above classes art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.

I guess you'd call me an independent since I've never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves no matter what the party label.

That is to say epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar so the invention itself has been.

If there will be a serious Palestinian prime minister who makes a 100 percent effort to end terrorism then we can have peace. Each side has to take steps. If terror continues there will not be an independent Palestinian state. Israel will not accept it if terror continues.

Without free self-respecting and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace that is peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state there can be no guarantee of external peace.