For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.

Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth

The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.

A deliberate plan is not always necessary for the highest art; it emerges.

Global warming, like Marxism, is a political theory of actions, demanding compliance with its rules.

The most socially subversive institution of our time is the one-parent family.

In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging.

The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.

Euphemism is a human device to conceal the horrors of reality.

To many, Heathrow in August is a paradigm of Hell.

I've been having an affair, but I still believe in family values.

Institutions or products of culture. But they formalize a set of norms.

I hope people think of me as a bit older. I do have a beard. That makes me look very old.

The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.

I approach the movies I make as a movie-lover as much as a movie-maker.

Surrounded by the self -sufficiency of American culture, we can convince ourselves that we have what it takes to achieve something great.

All you have to do is look at Michigan and look at Ohio and look at all of these places where so many of their jobs and their companies are just leaving, they're gone.

I can think of no other edifice constructed by man as altruistic as a lighthouse. They were built only to serve.

The sun is always shining someplace.

The spirit of rejection finds its support in the consciousness of separateness; the spirit of acceptance finds its base in the consciousness of unity.