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

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.

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.

The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your ‘civilization’.

I have lived enough to know great things will unfold for me externally only if I allow them to unfold for me internally.

Miracles seldom occur in the lives of those who do not consider them possible.

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies.

Darling, may you choose to live your life fueled by fear rather than ruled by fear.

Surrender is not the best way to live; it is the only way to live. Nothing else works.

A great destiny needs a generous diet. What can be expected of a people that live on macaroni!

The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research.