Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read – if not indeed write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

I have said this many times, that there seems to be enough room in the world for mediocre men, but not for mediocre women, and we really have to work very, very hard.

People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they’re gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

There are phases in life which surface at times, and it makes you understand that despite you working hard, everything what you are doing is probably not enough. That’s when you need to look around, and beyond.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

Many shoulder heavy burdens of righteous responsibility which, on occasion, seem so difficult to bear. I have heard those challenges termed impossible.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

There is so much that people take for granted.

There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, ‚Oh, you’re playing yourself.‘ I guess it’s kind of a compliment. Or people say, ‚Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.‘ The work is to make it look effortless. That’s the hard part.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.

Who is rich? He that rejoices in his portion.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

I do love the films I’ve done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we’re trying to make people laugh and I’m very proud of that.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Losing is not an option in Kolkata. It’s not easy, a lot of players even quit.

My wife, a schoolteacher, very disciplined. If you think I’m tough, trust me, and wait till you see when the children are on the naughty step. It’s hilarious. So we decided that I’m going to work like a donkey and provide amazing support for the family.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Speaking English is like tongue-twist for me. I can speak each word perfect, but then you have to string them together like, ‚Blah, blah, blah.‘ That’s when I get crazy.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.