Any idiot can be complicated. It takes a genius to be simple.

I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.

Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.

It's a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

I tell kids, don't trust the media. The media with their emphasis on fame is helping to destroy this country, helping destroy the human race. It's the plug-in drug.

Shh. Listen to the sounds that surround you. Notice the pitches, the volume, the timbre, the many lines of counterpoint. As light taught Monet to paint, the earth may be teaching you music.

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit.

Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.

If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled or composted, then it should be restricted, redesigned or removed from production.

If you rely on others to accomplish something in life, you’ll end up accomplishing nothing.

Public opinion is to an unconventional idea … what abortion is to sperm.

The only man never to be redeemed is the man without passion.

I read these polls because civil-liberties organizations tell me I need to be aware of public opinion.

There is no such thing as a 'self-made' man. We are made up of thousands of others.

People are always surprised when I say that I'm an atheist.

I felt slightly snobby about the genre. My pre-conceived notion of the comic book world had been: "Oh, that's nothing that I need to worry about!"

Cinema has become my life. I dont mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.

For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.

I consider this a kind of neoliberalism of the Left, this rise and promotion of spontaneity above preparation.