There's over a billion people on this planet that don't have access to clean drinking water.

If you believe in equality, if you believe in standing up for the rights of all, especially for people most affected by bigotry and discrimination, then you have no choice but to be present and accounted for when it comes to standing up for gays and lesbians in our society.

People like me who grew up in a working-class town, who don't have a college education, you don't usually hear from us.

Because I have an opinion, I have become public enemy number one to the Fox News Channel and the right wing.

The 'fiscal cliff' is a ruse, an invention by the right and the rich, to try and keep their huge tax breaks.

Any time you've got both the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, you're not long for the White House.

A newspaper is a public trust, and we will suffer as a society without them. It is not the Internet that has killed them. It is their own greed, it is their own stupidity, and it is capitalism that has taken our daily newspapers from us.

Any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled.

The American media wants to pump you full of fear.

Democrats have a history of backing away, backing down.

Building up the arms did not cause the fall of Eastern Europe.

I don't compromise my values and I don't compromise my work. That's why I've been kicked from one network to the next: I won't give in.

Filmmakers and artists always thrive during more liberal times.

Librarians in America do something like a couple of billion dollars worth of book business every year.

The media love to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up about 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.

Every fact in my films is true. And yet how often do I have to read over and over again about supposed falsehoods?

All of our political parties are bought and paid for by corporate America, Wall Street, and the wealthy interests. The Republican Party more so, but the Democrats take their share of the loot, too.

My film about Bush didn't prevent his reelection.

If the guy out in the woods with the Michigan Militia is a real estate negotiator, instead of some crackpot, and has a normal life, that's unnerving. You don't want to think it's as normal as the guy next door, hedging his lawn. It's easier to demonize or separate them off from 'us.'

You can't debate satire. Either you get it or you don't.

I was a good little boy and a good student. I've never been arrested.

The upper 1 percent, the people down on Wall Street, the corporate executives, they're the people that control this economy.

This is the crux of the problem: because the Republicans and the right wing have been successful in almost eliminating unions, everyone else has suffered as a result.

I remember the first time I received a cassette tape of a band called The Clash. I became an instant fan of the Clash and then bought their albums after that and went to their concerts and gave them my money... but I first got it for free.

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

We have to see that we're a part of each other, and we have to take care of each other. The reason why they have universal health care in Canada and Britain, these other places? Because they believe if one suffers, everybody suffers.

I did a filmstrip on pollution in the Davison area as my Eagle Scout project and showed it around town. Businesses who were the polluters were mad at me.

'Champagne' and 'breathmint' are the first two words all Oscar winners hear.

The vast majority of the guns in the U.S. are sold to white people who live in the suburbs or the country. When we fantasize about being mugged or home invaded, what's the image of the perpetrator in our heads? Is it the freckled-face kid from down the street - or is it someone who is, if not black, at least poor?

Under Reagan came the idea of putting your pension plan in the stock market, which wasn't a guaranteed pension.

I believe that when you provide information to people, they become less fearful and they will engage more in their democracy if they are empowered with information.

The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.

All religions teach the same basic thing, that you have to stand up for those that are considered the worst.

I don't believe that the Bush Administration had something to do with September 11th. I do believe that there were a lot of warning signals, but I don't think they were ignored on purpose - Bush just wanted to go to the ranch for a month.

Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.

Openness, transparency - these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt... and that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done.

L.A. - talk about a cruel city: Patients are forcibly removed from hospitals.

They said VCRs would kill the movies; it didn't.

A sane person would think that Wal-Mart would never carry 'Capitalism: A Love Story' because it's simply not in their best interests to inform their customers of their shady past.

I think the NRA, they got it half-right when they say, 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' I change it to, 'Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people.'

We should be licensing everybody with a gun. I have to have a license for my dog. I have to have a license for my car. If you're going to do my hair later you have to have a license... We don't require a license to own a firearm?

Oprah's got good politics, she's got a good heart, and she'll have us all up Jazzercising at six in the morning. This cannot be a bad thing, and reading a book while we're Jazzercising. So America would be better off if Oprah were president.

Three of the top six documentaries of all time, grossing, are made by me.

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.

This life is a gift, and to reject that gift or abuse that gift is not human and not worthy of us.

I'm a highly flawed individual, as we all are, and because I was raised by Jesuits, I'm constantly, 'What is it about me and what I can do to be better?'

I'm not a proselytizer. I was raised Catholic. I am a Catholic.

I've been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they're loath to do that because they think if it's a documentary it has to be deadly serious - it has to be like medicine that you're supposed to take. And I think it's what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries.

Republicans are relentless and they're smart, too - they're not all dumb - and on Election Day, they'll be up at five in the morning.