The future belongs to us. I think that art is a force that can change the world.

Nothing is allowed in public, while everything is permitted behind closed doors.

I believe in freedom, I'm for a world without borders. But that's an ideal. On a practical level, I'm for a secular state where religion only plays a minor role.

The most important element of democracy, I believe, is the protection of minorities.

My family thought if I spent time in the military, I'd become more reasonable, a bit calmer. But I've always been extreme in what I do - both as a believer and a nonbeliever.

I was a very devout boy and one day I heard the music of an Egyptian Koran singer in the mosque. The melancholy of this music touched me so deeply that it brought me to tears.

Fundamentalists can't take a joke. Ever. They want us to blindly obey, parrot everything they do, and believe in their dogmas.

I'm a musician; I have to perform. I can't give up. I have to be even more courageous. We know that we have a lot of enemies. Not only in Iran. But that doesn't matter.

I lived in the world of poetry and ideas. I thought life was all about art and philosophy. In the military, I suddenly found out about the real world.

Our ideas are like boomerangs, when you throw them they are destined to come back.

You have to tell guys to ask you on a date. Smile when you do it - however that works, I'm not 'Cosmo.' But yeah - not a lot of people know how to 'court' anymore, sorry.

Do you know how much damage we could do to each other in an hour?

I don't fold under pressure, great athletes perform better under pressure, so put pressure on me.

We are learning that the earth functions like an invisible organism. We are the various cells of one living being. Those who work to save the earth are its antibodies.

Democracy is good for everybody.

[Dwight Eisenhower was ] a citizen of the world.

Putin wants to stay in power, but not so that he can finally solve our most pressing problems: education, health care, poverty.

It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become.

People around us change and circumstances change. We can often find ourselves struggling against those things.