I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.
I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.
No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.
No doubt unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed into being by mere declarations.
Throughout my life I have cared as deeply about the songs of all peoples as I have about the rights of all peoples.
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 know for certain of only one commandment, one obligation, that God imposes upon us, and that is to be compassionate toward other human beings.
One might have thought the world would stop ascribing moral equivalence between acts of terrorism and acts of punishing terrorism. It has not happened that way.
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.
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?
What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.
I don't speak out because I am an actor nor will I keep silent because I am an actor. I respect my profession, but it endows me with no special privileges; but it also does not limit me or muzzle me. I am a person and a citizen with the attendant responsibilities of voice and vote.
I glory in the fact that a human being has multiple talents and exercises them all with a degree of integrity and artistic proficiency. That's what I do.
In my world, history comes down to language and art. No one cares much about what battles were fought, who won them and who lost them - unless there is a painting, a play, a song or a poem that speaks of the event.
I am filled with awe that filmmakers have the capacity to stir us and give us back a sense of wonder.
We live in a world of guns, bombs and terror. To conquer hate seems a nigh-impossible task.
You don't really need modernity in order to exist totally and fully. You need a mixture of modernity and tradition.
I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.
I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.
Must we be put to shame by much smaller and poorer countries, by Ireland, France, Austria or Sweden, who have understood that a nation's support of its arts is a matter of both national pride and cultural survival?
As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.
You can't expect the entire world to come to New York to see you. You have to travel to them.
For I firmly believe that Jewish life, indeed any communal life, can only be organized according to democratic principles.
Although I am deeply grateful to a great many people, I forgo the temptation of naming them for fear that I might slight any by omission.
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