In terms of pure physical effort, today was probably as hard as I've worked in any part. I spent the morning rowing, including the change of speeds Arrius [the Roman commander] test Judah with. A real bone-breaker.

My dissatisfaction with television as a medium has nothing to do with the audience or the fact that you don't require as much time to do it as you do a movie, but with its technical limitations.

Film is the only art form whose raw materials are so horrendously expensive that the artist cannot afford to buy them for himself.

Lenin in 1921 observed very presciently that motion pictures were the most powerful tool ever invented to shape the way we thought. He was right. Political films can be successful.

Clergymen tend to be unreliable and pompous figures. Seldom Jewish rabbis, less often Catholic priests, but Protestant ministers tend to be... not really very admirable. Not necessarily evil, but silly. And wrong, of course.

Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history's pocket change. Courage is history's true currency.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men