“Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they’re here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.”

No one man is superior to the game.

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving; it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.

Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America’s most privileged version of the level field.

The professionals must set a good example.

On a good day, I view the job [of president] as directing an orchestra. On the dark days, it is more like that of a clutch — engaging the engine to effect forward motion, while taking greater friction.

Major sports are major parts of society. It’s not anomalous to have people who love sports come from other parts of that society.

Some of my academic friends think Ive fallen from a very special grace.

Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods.

It is not enough to offer a smorgasbord of courses. We must insure that students are not just eating at one end of the table.

There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.

I’m the world’s expert on sterotypes held by academics about athletes and held by athletes about academics. To me, both of them are caricatures.

If a family is an expression of continuity through biology, a city is an expression of continuity through will amd imagination? through mental choices making artifice, not through physical reproduction.

A tremendous social responsibility comes with being a successful public performer.

People will say I’m an idealist. I hope so.

The university is our culture’s assertion that what is made by the mind has value and can convey values.

On matters of race, on matters of decency, baseball should lead the way.

Would Americans accept if we decided to come here and decide who your rulers should be? So why do you expect us Iranians to accept the idea that the United States shall come in there and decide who shall govern us?

People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one.

I had so many different ideas swirling between culture and how to tie things together.

When I’m speaking, I’m speaking only for myself. At the same time, I know that these ideas have wide support among the Iranian population.

When nature finally calls, they have no idea where to go and are in a mess.

All manners of freedom, including freedom of expression, freedom of conscious, freedom of thought…it accepts tolerance. But it is not an atheist society.

Acting school was summer camp, and I needed concentration camp.

Abroad, they have covered pretty much all subjects, explored every possibility, every twist. So similarities between ideas you have and those filmed abroad are quite possible.