Spotting talent is one of the essential elements of great leadership.

Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.

Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

Never assume that people in positions of responsibility are behaving responsibly.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

Books can change your life. Some of the most influential people in our lives are characters we meet in books.

My wife, the star I steer by.

Courage is contagious. If a leader shows courage, others get the idea.

Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.

Emotional intelligence begins to develop in the earliest years. All the small exchanges children have with their parents, teachers, and with each other carry emotional messages.

When we start to suffer, it tells us something very valuable. It means that we are not seeing the truth, and we are not relating from the truth. It's a beautiful pointer. It never fails.

In the '70s, everybody was doing drugs, so long as you showed up and did your work, they'd use you until you died.

If my wheel comes off and I hit the fence real hard, I get to whack every damn one of you with a hammer.

I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.

There is deception. People who think they are enlightened and it's just ego.

To my way of thinking, an actor's course is set even before he's out of the cradle.

We do meditation, spiritual practices in this temporary body. Though this body is temporary, you have to use temporary things to realize the Truth.

But Time, unfortunately, though it makes animals and vegetables bloom and fade with amazing punctuality has no such simple effect upon the mind of man.