You can't perish because of your own feelings; you have to embrace those things as an actor because it's part of your palette.

No one tries to cry. You try not to cry. No one tries to laugh. You try not to laugh.

As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.

I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.

I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.

Teachers are important in this world.

I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.

For my generation of actors, it was about the theatre. Television didn't exist. Coaxial cable didn't exist.

'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.

I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the kinds of things that human beings go through. I love to see spontaneity and 'inevitability.' How it gets there is going to shock the hell out of me, but it will get there somehow.

My father was an Austrian, and he brought some Torahs over to this country, ancient Torahs that were slipped out of Germany.

I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.

Every young actor wants to do 'Hamlet' on the West End. Why? Because they can bring something to it.

All an audience wants to believe is that what's going on is happening for the first time.

My technique has always been to include all the periphery around me.

To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.

I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.

My best stuff as a teacher was always to find the problems within each individual actor, and I'll suggest things that I know that particular actor will have difficulty with.

I'm a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.

Human beings are fascinating with religion and stories about not dying. Or dying and being brought back to life. I think it's just part of our make up.

I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.

As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals who died in the Holocaust, too. It's amazing that people allowed this slaughter to take place. There's a need to make these films and reiterate it happened.

I don't think villains think they are villains.

The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.

Because no matter who we are or where we come from, we're all entitled to the basic human rights of clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and healthy land to call home.

It's time for political leaders across the ideological spectrum to realize that, while partisanship is understandable, hyper-partisanship is destructive to our country. We need more visionary leaders who will earnestly strive for bipartisanship and finding policy solutions that can move America forward.

Whether it is a tsunami, or whether it is a hurricane, whether it's an earthquake - when we see these great fatal and natural acts, men and women of every ethnic persuasion come together and they just want to help.

I think a culture of nonviolence will help create the condition where poverty is unacceptable, where racism is way behind us and not something that we have to deal with on a frequent basis, and where militarism and violence are reduced almost to be nonexistent.

What we have still not learned is how to treat our fellow human beings... We have to find a way to coexist without doing harm to one another and that is whether it's in the United Stated or in the Middle East or in the African continent or in Asia or anywhere on the planet.

Our challenge is to mobilize a new coalition of conscience to restore the Voting Rights Act, strengthen voting rights and broaden voter access in the legislatures of the 50 states.

I'm totally against the death penalty - which, if anyone has a right to support, I do - because I do not see it as a deterrent to crime.

Our leaders should certainly engage passionate advocacy of needed reforms, and equally strong criticism of policies they believe are destructive to America. But, from the school boards to the White House, let's elect more candidates who are committed to constructive dialogue and reasonable compromises.

I just think we have to create the climate so that people will come out on election day and vote.

Some people need a targeted kind of learning. They need a different approach, like charter schools. There are virtual classrooms that some will do well in. The reality is, if there are no options, if there is just one particular standard, then someone is going to fall through the cracks, as we've seen.

I think that it's appropriate to have the Confederate flag perhaps in a museum, but it is not a unifying symbol.

Violence is the language of the unheard.

In the fifty years since the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, we have made tremendous strides in the fight for equality. We must continue to move forward, not backward.

My father's approach to the most brutal and unambiguous social injustices during the civil rights struggle was rooted in nonviolence as a morally and tactically correct response.

In my view, nothing would do more to reduce violence in American cities than genuine full employment - a job at a decent wage for every person who wants to work. Numerous studies have shown that violence increases with unemployment.

African Americans and all people of color can benefit greatly by supporting the Clean Power Plan, which will help reduce the impacts of climate change and expand the use of clean, renewable energy from the wind and sun.

The best way to overcome joblessness is to create a social contract between the public and private sectors to provide decent jobs for the unemployed. The decaying infrastructure of our cities is in urgent need of repair and restoration.

It would be wonderful to have a president who talked about bringing America together and exhibited that, who was involved in doing a social project... that would show humility.

My mom and dad understood that every generation has to earn its freedom over and over again.

As our nation has become more divided, there is a resonance for a message to bring people together.

There's something wrong in a nation where six million black men are not allowed to vote because they were convicted of felonies. They've paid their dues to society, but yet their right to vote is not reinstated.

I think the best of us comes when we are working together collectively. And it doesn't mean that we can't disagree. We've got to learn, as Dad taught us, to disagree without being disagreeable.

The Environmental Protection Agency's first-ever limits on carbon pollution from power plants will create clean- energy jobs, improve public health, bring greater reliability to our electric power grid, bolster our national security, demonstrate the United States' resolve to combat climate change and maybe even reduce our utility bills.

My dad was not a tall man, but he always made me feel like he was a giant. I was never afraid when I was with him.

My dad was focused on trying to get a guaranteed annual income for all people in 1968, shortly before he was killed. He did not get to realize that dream.

America has an obligation to secure its borders, but it is wrong to pass laws that treat human beings as something less than human. If my father were alive, he would be in the forefront of the struggle for a fair and humane reform of our immigration laws.