If people's night fears of sorcery - which negatively influences their decision to use mosquito nets - fail to impress the outsider, the brute everyday reality remains; in a number of rural African villages it is still much too common for very real hyenas to snatch people, especially children, out of their own homes as they lie sleeping at night, because of the lack of a good front door.

The reality is that the American people have no desire for an empire. This is not to say that they don't want the benefits, both economic and strategic. It simply means that they don't want to pay the price. Economically, Americans want the growth potential of open markets but not the pains. Politically, they want to have an enormous influence, but not the resentment of the world. Military, they want to be protected from dangers but not to bear the burdens of long-term strategy.

Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods—they are described as powerful beings who can bring rains and victories—but they have no influence on the law that suffering arises from craving. If the mind of a person is free of all craving, no god can make him miserable. Conversely, once craving arises in a person's mind, all the gods in the universe cannot save him from suffering.

Since in fact liturgical traditions, vestments, church vessels, etc., were immediately removed wherever Calvinism infiltrated or Reformed ideas even gained influence in the church's polity, the reaction which it caused in Lutheran areas was a conscious propensity for ceremonies. Henceforth, therefore, the celebration of an emphatically liturgical service was among the visible signs by which the Lutheran character of confession was demonstrated outwardly.

Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.

Why isn’t it fun to watch a videotape of last night’s football game even when we don’t know who won? Because the fact that the game has already been played precludes the possibility that our cheering will somehow penetrate the television, travel through the cable system, find its way to the stadium, and influence the trajectory of the ball as it hurtles toward the goalposts!

The Persians are very fond of wine ... It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk and then in the morning when they are sober the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made and if it is then approved they act on it if not they set it aside. Sometimes however they are sober at their first deliberations but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.

Michael [Hutchence] is hands down one of the greatest frontmen in music. The style, the voice—all of it. Any way that I was ever influenced by him really comes down to small, pale imitations compared to the real thing. There is a fearlessness about him. Watching him at Wembley Stadium with 70,000 people, he looks as comfortable as if he were in his own living room.

As you strive for personal effectiveness and leadership excellence, there are local and global questions that you will inevitably have to face. These range from poverty, corruption, terrorism, food security, scarcity of resources and overpopulation among others. Your power and influence for significance in leadership excellence will increase in direct proportion to your ability to find effective and sustainable practical solutions to some of these real-life challenges.

The leadership challenge for celebrities and those in the limelight includes turning focus from being self-centred to influencing vulnerable and gullible youngsters, especially teenagers, in a positive way; realising that it is possible to entertain and increase following without promoting societal vices like drug & alcohol abuse, irresponsible sexual behaviour, prejudice of all kinds, criminal heroism, gangsterism and all forms of violence.