Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.

I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

I believe we need heroes...we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.

I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them.

I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.

I want to be remembered as a storyteller.

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.

I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.

Lead by example, not by instruction.

If after I depart this vale you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

I think the reason I don't read is because, when I'm reading, I feel like I'm missing out on something else. You know, What are my friends doing? Where's my girlfriend?

Further, Take heed that you faithfully perform the business you have to do in the world, from a regard to the commands of God; and not from an ambitious desire of being esteemed better than others.

I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.

Thoughtfulness is the way to deathlessness, thoughtlessness the way to death. The thoughtful do not die: the thoughtless are as if dead already.

In wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do

The parents used to drag the little ones, and now the kids are coming--and they're not little anymore. Things are evolving. Maybe there's a renaissance for our music.

Each time that I have two or three days off, I'm off somewhere in California.

I don't harp on what I could change about the past, because I can't go back and change it. But definitely a lot of things I would change.