I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.

Obey the voice within - it commands us to give of ourselves and help others. As long as we have the capacity to give, we are alive

I have always been grateful that my Russian mother and father came to this country to give me a better chance, and I have had a better chance.

I'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke. Most women are messy about it, particularly about their lipstick. I don't mind wiping lipstick off myself, but I hate seeing it on cigarettes, napkins and coffee cups! I don't like women with all their beauty machinery showing-curlers, cold cream, mascara brushes. I'd even prefer to not see a woman touch up her lipstick, but I guess that's expecting too much.

Sometimes, the thing that ties you down sets you free.

I directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.

On a crowded bus in Israel, a mother was speaking to her son in Yiddish. An Israeli woman reprimanded her. "You should be speaking Hebrew. Why are you talking to him in Yiddish?" The mother answered, "I don't want he should forget he's a Jew."