“I am simply trying to struggle through life trying to do God’s bidding.”

The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

Teachers are the most important individuals in our society – nothing is as powerful as the human touch in education.

You must let go of your past and embrace your future and figure out what path you’re going to go down

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

It’s very important not to do what your peers think you should do, not do what your parents think,your teachers or even your culture. Do what’s inside of you.

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.

As long as you want anything very much, especially more than you want God, it is an idol.

For the godly poet must be chaste himself, but there is no need for his verses to be so.

Secure against the designs of men, secure against the malignity of the Gods, they have accomplished a thing of infinite difficulty; that to them nothing remains even to be wished.

At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it is.

I think God rarely gives to one man, or one set of men, more than one great moral victory to win.

Silence is the only Voice of our God.

I know not what you believe of God, but I believe He gave yearnings and longings to be filled, and that He did not mean all our time should be devoted to feeding and clothing the body

They are not wise, then, who stand forth to buffet against Love; for Love rules the gods as he will, and me.