I was taught from a very early age that it was probably the most American thing you can do is to question what's going on and to try to fix things that you see that aren't right. I believed that as a young person, and I believe that today.

Nobody was talking about healthcare until 'Sicko' came out.

I had a newspaper in Flint, Michigan called the 'Flint Voice,' and so it was a, you know, underground, alternative newspaper that I edited and put out for about ten years.

The money to fund great things and innovations and programs is gone in our lifetime; it's all gone to debt. So we won't be able to solve global warming or have the transportation that we needed for the 21st century. We should be supporting people with great ideas, but it's gone, and now it's gotta be paid back with interest to banks in China.

If your bank took bailout money, take your money out of that bank and put it in a credit union. Credit unions are owned by the people who have their money in the credit union.

I was one of the first 18-year-olds in the United States elected to public office right after 18-year-olds got the right to vote back in the early '70s. I ran for the Board of Education.

It turns out Cuba has this incredible healthcare system for a very poor country.

A lot of people on Capitol Hill don't want to talk to me.

As far as what I do love, I love birds; I love lavender.

If we didn't have Social Security, our seniors would live mostly in poverty. You'd have another 18 million people in poverty.

I did not like 'The Hurt Locker.' It's a lazy way to make a movie, frankly. I could put you on the edge of your seat quite easily, and have you feel the tension for 2 hours, if every other scene practically is, 'Should we cut the red wire or the green wire?'

We all need to be huge supporters of the theatrical documentary.

Yeah, I think of what I do as a work of journalism. It's more like the op-ed page, though. These are my opinions. My point of view. The opinions are mine and I let you make up your own mind.

Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in - democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It's not about any of those things now. It's about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed.

I'd feel bad if I had you come into a theater and you leave feeling ripped off.

I ask all Americans with a conscience to shun anything and everything to do with the murderous state of Georgia.

It really is disgusting when a guy in a ball cap with a high school education is the one asking the tough questions.

Nobody has been arrested on Wall Street for the crash of 2008. They're not paying their fair share of the taxes. And now with the Citizens United case of the Supreme Court, they get to buy politicians up out in the open.

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

I assume everything I'm saying in an email or saying on the telephone is being looked at.

Ask anyone on Social Security if their check comes on time every month. Like clockwork. And it comes through the so-called dilapidated U.S. mail. My dad's check literally will come on the same day every month. The government has been quite good and efficient at creating a number of systems.

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

If you're white, and you really want to help change things, why not start with yourself?

This book, 'Stupid White Men,' has sold now over four million copies worldwide. Probably about half of that may be in the U.S. and Canada, and the rest, overseas.

When I make a film, I'm not doing it purely for political reasons. If I just wanted to do that, I'd run for office.

What really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was, 'We'll build it and you buy it. We'll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.'

It's a lot of hard work to do a weekly TV show. It's certainly not fun.

When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that's considered a good thing.

When the women's liberation movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, at the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe in the basic principles of any of those philosophies.

My dad was an autoworker, my mom was a clerk. Until I was thirty-five, I never made more than fifteen thousand dollars a year.

I don't talk in sound bites.

I mean if politics was my main motivation I would be doing politics. But I'm a filmmaker.

How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have... plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?

It should be a crime to make a profit off somebody being sick.

I do believe that we are to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute you. I believe that there is power and strength in that.

I'm from the Midwest, and guys like me don't go on diets. We don't do well on spinning classes.

Most liberals I know were for invading Afghanistan right after 9/11.

The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea.

There is nowhere in the four Gospels where Jesus uses the word 'homosexual.'

North Korea has taught a great lesson to all the countries in the world, especially the rogue countries of dictatorships or whatever: if you don't want to be invaded by America, get some nuclear weapons.

Sometimes it's important to vote - you know, to make a statement, to make a point; certainly, many of us who were involved in the Nader campaign in 2000 felt that way.

Comedy is a great slayer of rogues in power.

Army Specialist Bradley Manning deserves a medal, not prison.

New York City has become a place where it's not easy for the working class to even live.

Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil.

There's been almost a dozen films that have been made against me. There's actually more films made attacking me than films I've made.

Most Americans are very responsible.

The wealthy have never liked to pay for the labor that enriches them. Ever since slavery was eliminated, they have been trying to keep it as close to slavery as they can without violating the slave laws.

Documentaries are a form of journalism.

No 22-year-old should have to enter the real world already in a virtual debtors' prison.