We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon.

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.

You are a perfect spiritual being. Get used to that idea.

I have taught some master classes and things at my alma mater and sometimes at my kids' school. I will go in and talk to the theater students. I wouldn't really call myself a teacher.

Education should learn from the positive side of gaming - reward, accomplishment, and fun.

And if the audience is in a kind of naughty, raunchy mood, then they're going to make naughty, raunchy suggestions and then we take them and we do the scene anyway, and that's part of the fun.

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

Making a film, you're in a really dark tunnel and the only kind of illumination is the shared experience you're having with your fellow cast and director.

At the battle of the bands the loser's always the audience.

The upside of being in the closet is that you develop skills of duplicity, which are great for big-time politicians.

For it is only by forgetting that we ever really drop the thread of time and approach the experience of living in the present moment, so elusive in ordinary hours.

The most common trait of all primitive peoples is a reverence for the life-giving earth.