When you Google me, you'll find a lot of people don't like Richard Dreyfuss. Because I'm cocky and I present a cocky attitude. But no one has ever disagreed with the notion I represent, that we need more civic education. So far there's 100 percent support for that.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a teacher, a history teacher. After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class.

When you work in front of the people, either in a film or in television, the people who are in the room with you are not watching you work, they're working so you'd have to light a fire to get them to watch what you were doing.

I have more fun and more grand and glorious moments of my life than anyone I've never known. I know that some people call that manic-depress, and that other people call that being touched by God. I just call myself lucky.

Civility is not not saying negative or harsh things. It is not the absence of critical analysis. It is the manner in which we are sharing this territorial freedom of political discussion. If our discourse is yelled and screamed and interrupted and patronized, that's uncivil.

The happiest I ever been was when I was a struggling actor. I've had big houses and small houses. I always had work available for most of my career. When I actually had to find jobs to make money, that's when I was happy.

I really think that living is the process of going from complete certainty to complete ignorance.