My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. . . We live in a contaminated moral environment. We have fallen morally ill because we became used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depth and dimensions. . . The previous regime . . . reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Leo Rosten

I really don't like to do back-to-back movies. I concentrate on things at home. My family and school life are important to me. I try to do one movie a year.

Anna Chlumsky

I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One's enough.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

Henry Kissinger

Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician.

Matthew Prior

I have traveled a long road from the battlefield to the peace table.

Moshe Dayan

Certainties are arrived at only on foot.

Antonio Porchia

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

Jimmy Connors

Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness, or the realization of our duty and privilege as God's children.

Phillips Brooks

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

Khalil Gibran

Out of the cacophony of random suffering and chaos that can mark human life, the life artist sees or creates a symphony of meaning and order. A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives.

Desmond Tutu

I tend to score with songs from Western pop music.

Danny Boyle