Some folklorists just collected dead bones from one graveyard, only to bury them in another, their library.

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.

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but he does what is still more wonderful: he makes saints out of sinners.

It (modernization) is just another jungle closing in.

The will to act is a renewable resource.

I would have rather been punished for asserting myself than become another victim of hatred.

People who face a difficult question often answer an easier one instead, without realizing it.

Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee

In the sometimes ridiculous action scenarios you're laughing out loud, and so the more committed and in fact the more highbrow the music is, the funnier it is.

My point of reference is life, in everything that I do.

I always made people laugh, and everybody wanted me to sit at the table with them. I don't joke as much as I used to, but I can still be a little comedian every now and then.