I started getting jobs, and I thought it was going to be real easy.

I think it's good to meet smart people and talk.

Nobody has a franchise on what is good.

I still think I'm going to do something else when I grow up.

I just don't get invited to the same dinner parties I used to like to go to.

If I don't see my kids for six days, I start to get withdrawal pains.

I don't even like to use the word relationship. I don't know what it means.

I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.

I kind of dwindled into acting.

It made me think about a whole area of human activity that was not really a concern to me before that, because I was involved in reading Chinese history, or languages, or whatever.

I started getting jobs, and I thought it was going to be real easy.

I'm a 9/11 Republican.

I do believe all actors are smart.

I had no desire from an early age to be on the stage.

Acting is not about knowing all this stuff; it's about character.

Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.

I kind of have a dilettantish spirit about me.

I think you have an obligation to be an optimist. Because if you're not, nothing will change.

It's not like I'm the most famous person in the world.

But why should I run for office and lose what little influence I have?

I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors, and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit.

Two, I actually learned a lot of things that served me very well when it came to repeating performances on stage, because it is a craft and you do need a technique for it.

The twentieth century has exhibited a barbarism and lack of respect for human life on a massive scale just about unknown before.

Anyone who devotes time and attention to what makes people tick, to me, is a smart person.

Artists speak the truth to the public without fear of retribution or damage to their careers.

Then I realized that to be really good at this requires a lot of energy and concentration and skill.

I saw and I met a lot of people who were in the field. It also provided a context in which I came to respect what the actor did, because I saw how difficult it actually was to do.

Involvement in public affairs is a legitimate use of celebrity.

But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.

In Europe, people in the arts are considered part of the intelligentsia; they are considered part of the elite.

Nothing gets a bigger laugh than when you refer to things like ethics or human rights.

For about the first ten years of my career, I wasn't terribly motivated.

If you don't think you want to go on a train and read the paper every day and work from nine to six at night, there was something about the uncertainty when I was younger which was very attractive.

I was immature the way I handled the business. I saw myself as a tribune of the people.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

In 1975 I decided that there was no future in flying (airline jobs were impossible to get, and who wants a job where you are judged only by seniority?) and headed off to grad school.

In the middle of a recession no tax increase is justified because it kills jobs, and any tax increase is a job-killing measure and should be defeated.

I started going back and forth, New York, London, New York, London. I wasn't looking back at all. I was doing tons of jobs. Working, working, working, working.

We have stabilized our economy. We took over a very sick economy, and we were hemorrhaging 750,000 jobs a month. We have stopped the hemorrhaging. In fact, we had 140,000 job growth last month. And that's what I call progress.

We need to work together, on a bipartisan basis, to create new jobs, increase job training, enact real and substantive middle class tax relief, and reward companies that create jobs at home.

I think that obstacles lead to growth and ultimately, the most learning I've done in my life is between jobs.

I would certainly choose my jobs depending on the actions of the character. I won't do anything that has to do with child abuse or women's abuse.

Today, unless women gain jobs and athletic scholarships commensurate with their percentage of the population, feminists scream discrimination.

A great deal has been said about my commitment not to raise taxes. It's a core value - it's common sense - it's important to keeping and growing jobs - and it's mainstream!

But generally speaking, people weren't fired, art jobs were very hard to get, so something really calamitous had to happen to a person who was working there in order for you to find a space.

Investing in industries and technology for the 21st century generates high-skilled, high-wage jobs for industries of the future.

Government does not create jobs, it only creates the conditions that make jobs more or less likely.

Life with a scientist who is often changing jobs and is frequently away at meetings and on lecture tours is not easy. Without a secure home base, I could not have made much progress.

The stark reality facing us today is that without the labour reforms, workers will get neither the income nor jobs in the face of cut-throat global economic competition.