“Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director and regulator, the standard of them all.”

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Men love to hear of their power, but have an extreme disrelish to be told their duty.

Applaud us when we run, Console us when we fall, Cheer us when we recover.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement.

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.

There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.

By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little.

Most of the films are only 60% taken, rest is a director’s input.

If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

My favorite directors are Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Patrick Daughters.

We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects.

With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can’t possibly make a good film.

Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.

You have to be strong to be a carpenter, maybe, but the director of a film doesn’t need to have muscles.