People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's an active disengagement.

Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means, "God in us."

History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.

By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

I have made all my films for my children with the exception of my first film because my oldest daughter wasn't born when I was making the film about the Brooklyn Bridge.

Peace is more of an internal settlement rather than what is visible on the external.

Great ideas without some consistent actions are nothing but some creative thoughts in one's mind.

The child has a primary need to be regarded and respected as the person he really is at any given time, and as the center - the central actor - in his own activity.

I have characterized Nixon as a loner, a cold man with great self-confidence and a one-track mind centered on the advancement of Richard Nixon.

It turns out that there is something more magnificent than nature. It's love.

Newton was the greatest genius that ever existed, and the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish.

I'm a fool, to confuse this with goodness. I am not good. I know too much to be good. I know myself. I know myself to be vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly.

Crooks aren't the worst people, just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.

I'm pretty ruthless about that; I think when you sign over your story, you sign over your story.

For two thousand years Christianity has been telling us: life is death, death is life; it is high time to consult the dictionary.