“Only by proving that we are superior to the savages, not only through our power to kill them but through our entire way of life, can we control them as they are now, in their present stage; it is necessary for their own well-being, even more than ours.”

“I truly believe the only way we can create global peace is through not only educating our minds, but our hearts and souls. ”

“For this is our central human problem: that we are almost constantly the victims of our emotions, always being swept up and down on a kind of inner-switchback. We possess a certain control over them; we can 'direct our thoughts' -- or feelings -- in such a way as to intensify them. This is certainly our most remarkable human characteristic: imagination. Animals require actual physical stimuli to trigger their experience. A man can retreat into a book -- or a daydream -- and live through certain experiences quite independent of the physical world. He can even, for example, imagine a sexual encounter, and not only experience all the appropriate physical responses, but even the sexual climax. Such a curious ability is far beyond the power of any animal.”

“We are all at one stage or another of being unfinished. We can be born with deficiencies, or incur disabilities, some of which last through life. In fact, we are never finished while death is still in front of us. When there is something that cannot be resolved or fulfilled within our present span of life, it helps to remember that our life was not something we had a right to in the first place; it is simply gift. And our present life is not the whole of it.”

“If we are to control our own future, it will be necessary, not only to obtain the cooperation of people, but to prepare comprehensive plans for that future.”

“Our destinies are our own, if we have the courage to take control of them.”

“It is we who infuse life with meaning through our actions and the stories we create with them.”

“We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.”

“I think the film is so interesting because I have never had an outpouring like this in my entire life as an actor. We shift stories in our own lives to be able to survive them, about our own family and whatever traumas we have walked through, to make them somehow palatable. And somehow, in adulthood, it's like we have to relive those stories in order to find healing in them.”

“We must realize the extent to which it is necessary that our knowledge of language be based on history. Only history can impart to words that degree of precision which we need in order to understand them well.”