The future of American film lies on television.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.

I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

Many people will have nothing at the end of their working lives.

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

Hundreds of people who’ve never written before send in ‚Dr. Who‘ scripts. They may have good ideas, but what they fail to realise is that writing for TV is incredibly complicated. They have no idea how difficult it is and what the financial commitment is.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

At the major studios, you see people wanting to remake a TV series, wanting to make a sequel.

Men don’t care what’s on TV. They only care what else is on TV.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

I met Will Smith twice. I didn’t talk to him for too long but I was trying to let him know that my age group grew up watching him – he was the coolest guy on television and the coolest guy in movies.

Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

On one of my last days at school, the headmaster said I would either end up in prison or become a millionaire. That was quite a startling prediction, but in some respects, he was right on both counts!

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

When you’re young, you’re not afraid of what comes next. You’re excited by it.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably ‚Doctor Who.‘ What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

If my future were determined just by my performance on a standardized test, I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee you that.

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.

You tell me: Can you live crushed under the weight of the present? Without a memory of the past and without the desire to look ahead to the future by building something, a future, a family? Can you go on like this? This, to me, is the most urgent problem that the Church is facing.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Earth might one day soon resemble the planet Venus.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future.

The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.