The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

To pray is to praise.

When he studied, it was not so much for a promotion as to EXCEL at his job.

Popular music is all about traveling at the speed of you and elevating the individual as the highest thing in the world.

Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear.

My movies work because not many people in Hollywood are like me.

At the weekend, one of the paparazzi left their lunch box filled with half-eaten pasta salad on my doorstep: it was like a little warning, you know? 'We have been here.'

I don't want to be a rock star all my life. I couldn't bear to end up like Elvis Presley in Las Vegas with all those housewives and old ladies coming in with their handbags.

There is no romance without some lying. That's what romance is - a little bit of Vaseline on the camera lens of life.

I always have a contract with a character. Even when he's unappealing. The contract is to give him his due. To tell his story. And to keep his secrets.

Everyone keeps asking me, What are you doing? I say, Why do I need to do anything? I'm rich.