“By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.”

“All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.”

“I am a universalist, passionately devoted to the cause of equality within the human family.”

“Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?”

“You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.”

“No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.”

“You cannot give out one frequency, that of disrespect, and expect respect to flow toward you. Neither can you hold on to your biases, prejudices, and negative thinking toward something, and expect ...”

“You have had many successes, and you have earned the right to be respected.”

“Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.”

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

“Hate the sin, love the sinner.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, its apathy, when you simply don't bother about that person!”

“They had killed themselves over our dying forests, over manatees maimed by propellers as they surfaced to drink from garden hoses; they had killed themselves at the sight of used tires stacked high...”

“The world seemed to shimmer a little at the edges.”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”