“If you hear how wonderful you are often enough, you begin to believe it, no matter how you try to resist it.”

You have yourself to blame.

You can’t allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, ‘Merry Christmas?’ Give me a break. If people don’t like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

Just learning how to read music requires metrics, and I think that helps you with mathematics. A lot of scientists and doctors have a musical background – it’s very interesting.

It is absolutely vital that we do all we can to allow Americans to practice their religious ways, while simultaneously ensuring that no one’s beliefs infringe upon those of others. We should also serve as champions of freedom of religion throughout the world.

There’s no such thing as useless knowledge. You never know what doors it’s going to open up for you.

We’ve gotten into this – this mindset of fighting politically correct wars. There is no such thing as a politically correct war.

There comes a time when people with values simply have to stand up. Think about Nazi, Germany. Most of those people did not believe in what Hitler was doing.

If we set our priority “the removal of all risk”, we’ll soon have sterile, stagnant, and unstimulating learning environments.

The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.

We need to start thinking about the needs of the American people before we go and solve everybody else’s problems.

If we recognize our talents and use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, we will rise to the top of our field.

If we can take young people who excel at the highest levels, put them on the same kind of pedestal as the all-state basketball player and the all-state football player, and begin to get the same kind of recognition, it will have a profound effect, and we are finding that it does.

Every one of us must fight for it, because we’re fighting for our children and the next generation.

America became a great nation early on not because it was flooded with politicians, but because it was flooded with people who understood the value of personal responsibility, hard work, creativity, innovation, and that’s what will get us on the right track now, as well.

We are more than just flesh and bones. There’s a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can’t measure. We can’t find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it’s there.

Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are – they don’t get to change the definition.

I’m not trying to keep anybody happy.

I think it gets uncomfortable when you try to act like you didn’t just tell a joke that bombed.

I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it’s totally not, which is why I’m trying to get away from it because it’s just easy and automatic.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There’s always this sound out there that’s just a little bit beyond my reach and I’m trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

My favourite genre lies inside myself, and as I follow my favourite stories, characters and images, it sums up to a certain genre.

People in the rich countries who have done very well, who are at the top of the income pyramid, try to steamroll over the opposition of the middle without changing anything in social programs, or any redistribution. And they take their votes for a given.

When I started, the scripts weren’t as good, and you’d have to have a huge burst of energy to go, “Sheesh, how am I going to? This stuff’s no good.”

Fear will give us a reason not to try; hope will give us a reason not to listen.