Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.

Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.

It seems not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life. It is the basic truth.

In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.

Bureaucracies are designed to perform public business. But as soon as a bureaucracy is established, it develops an autonomous spiritual life and comes to regard the public as its enemy.

Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.

Say "Yes" to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say "Yes" to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say "Yes" to dreams of love and freedom. It is the password to utopia.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.

For magic to exist, it must be shared. Always remember to pass along your kindness to others... A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.

The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.

I've noticed that the more I open up, the more I learn.

I think that there have been a number of public figures where you start hearing commentary that is dangerous because what it starts doing is it starts dividing us up as Americans.

I haven't traditionally been a family entertainer.

There are some politicians who, if their constituents were cannibals, would promise them missionaries in every pot.

The stories from 1975 on are not finished and there is no resolve. I could spend 50 hours on the last 25 years of jazz and still not do it justice.

The director's in charge of every single decision [in film]. It's a dictatorship.It's a benevolent dictatorship, but it's true. It's every single shot. There's nothing arbitrary.

A batsman goes out and is then in until he gets out. This goes on until the last batsman is out, apart from one who is still in and therefore not out.

Barack Obama is an economic patriot.