As musicians and artists it's important we have an environment - and I guess when I say environment I really mean the industry that really nurtures these gifts. Oftentimes the machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society.

Many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from serious long-term physical and mental health problems due to their service. It is unconscionable to cut the already limited health care benefits available to these brave men and women.

I think I am missing a gene that most people have to enable them to feel happiness about success and these kind of things.

With respect to the first of these obstacles it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists that they confine their attention to Wealth and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue.

We hear of the wealth of nations of the powers of production of the demand and supply of markets and we forget that these words mean no more if they mean any thing then the happiness and the labor and the necessities of men.

Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes the big ones don't really mean anything.

My travels led me to where I am today. Sometimes these steps have felt painful difficult but led me to greater happiness and opportunites.

I admit I can't shake the idea that there is virtue in suffering that there is a sort of psychic economy whereby if you embrace success happiness and comfort these things have to be paid for.

It was as if all of the happiness all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring bittersweet tones and flowed away becoming temporal and transitory once more.

Today we stand as a united country and are much closer to the ideals set forth in our Constitution that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.