I. King Jordan

There are people who are born deaf and grow up deaf who don't speak at all, and some of them have told me that they resent a little bit that I do speak. But, you know, I have to be myself. I have to do what I'm comfortable doing.

At Gallaudet, deafness isn't an issue. You don't even think about it. Students can pay attention to accounting or psychology or journalism. But when a deaf person goes to another college, no matter how supportive it is, that person doesn't get the same access.

I'm committed to sign in everything I communicate, but I also speak. I still believe that I reach more people when I do that. I bridge two different cultures and two different worlds, and I think that bridge still needs work.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

Somehow we must reintegrate the scientific with the popular and reconnect the future to the present. This is less a job for scientists, engineers, bureaucrats, and administrators and more a job for novelists, moviemakers, popularizers, and politicians.