“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.

I’ve always tried to be aware of what I say in my films, because all of us who make motion pictures are teachers – teachers with very loud voices.

I’m extremely grateful that I discovered my passion. I love movies. I love to watch them, I love to make them.

Working hard is very important. You’re not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

We were always dreaming of how it was going to be.

We are all living in cages with the door wide open.

Being in Washington is more fictional than being in Hollywood.

You need peers; you need people who are at the same level you are. You never know in life when you’re going to need help, and you never know who you’re going to need it from.

All democracies turn into dictatorships – but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

If America is the pursuit of happiness, the best way to pursue happiness is to help other people.

Success is when you try to achieve your inward vision externally and have it come off the way you see it. Then YOU feel successful about it; that’s how success is measured.

Train yourself to let go of the things you fear to lose.

I’ve discovered that most critics themselves are cinematically illiterate. They don’t really know much about movies. They don’t know the history. They don’t know the technology. They don’t know anything. So for them to try to analyze it, they’re lost.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

It’s not a matter of how well can you make a movie. It’s how well can you make it under the circumstance, because there’s always circumstances. You cannot use that as an excuse.

Someday you’re going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.

Extremism thrives amid ignorance and anger, intimidation and cowardice.

False optimism sooner or later means disillusionment, anger and hopelessness.

Where talent is lacking, anger writes poetry.

Fair peace becomes men; ferocious anger belongs to beasts.

When you experience loss, people say you’ll move through the 5 stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. What they don’t tell you is that you’ll cycle through them all every day.

How can you stop yourself from yelling and shouting and accusing everyone of cruelty? The easy answer is that the aggressive approach simply doesn’t work.

We were fundamentally the same. They expressed their anger more willingly. We developed the capacity to internalize our anger, using a nonviolent discipline.

I have all bad days. I think I need help. I got an anger problem.