"And love, with a cursive capital 'L,' is merely sleight of hand, doled out by genetic edict in order to keep DNA flowing. It's all genetics. And beyond that, it's all just zeros and ones. But friendship, with an unpretentious lowercase 'f,' is real and right and valuable."

"He was the epitome of acting out to get attention. I think everyone acknowledged his jokes as a kind of defense mechanism. ('Humor? That's my lizard tail. You can look at that while I run away,' he'd once said.)"

"I'm not dead. A dim realization but an important one, because I should have died."

"In Freud's view, development is largely complete by adolescence. In contrast, one of Freud's students, Erik Erikson (1902–1994) believed that development continues throughout life. Erikson took the foundation laid by Freud and extended it through adulthood and into late life."

"All world-images are apt to become corrupt when left to ecclesiastic bureaucracies. But this does not make the formation of world-images expendable. And I can only repeat that we deny the remnants of old-world images at our own risk, because we do not overcome them by declaring them — with all the righteousness of skepticism — something of a secret sin. They are not less powerful for being denied."

"Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; for such mutilation undercuts the life principle of trust, without which every human act, may it feel ever so good and seem ever so right is prone to perversion by destructive forms of conscientiousness."

"Doubt is the brother of shame."

"When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases."

"Children love and want to be loved and they very much prefer the joy of accomplishment to the triumph of hateful failure. Do not mistake a child for his symptom."

"Healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death."

"It's all been a bad joke that just ran out of control. I got into food for fun but the business got a mind of its own. Now — my good Lord — look where it has gotten me. My products are on supermarket shelves, in cinemas, in the theater. And they say show business is odd."

"When I realized I was going to have to be a whore, to put my face on the label, I decided that the only way I could do it was to give away all the money we make. Over the years, that ethical stance has given us a 30 per cent boost. One in three customers buys my products because all the profits go to good causes and the rest buy the stuff because it is good."

"Just when things look darkest, they go black."

"I cannot bear to look at a film that I made before 1990. Maybe 1985. There's no sense even trying to explain it. I really just can't watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts, so I don't look at anything."

"To that extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality is probably the best part of acting."

"This is not a celebrity issue. This is a political issue and the concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet. In 1987, the average CEO against someone who was working in his factory was 70 times. It's now 410 times. If you eliminate the middle class, which we are slowly doing, incidentally, Aristotle said the greatest government is the government that has the least number of people on each end. It makes sense. So, I don't think that there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me."

"Building weapons that we don’t need, don’t work, and aren’t necessary, and have no mission — that’s not bad politics, that’s robbery."

"I had no natural gift to be anything — not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches — not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me."

"I've been accused of being aloof. I'm not. I'm just wary."

"I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?"

"Paul likes to test himself. That's what makes Paul run. He's got a lot of courage, a highly underrated element in people's lives these days."

"He has a good character, and not many people do. I think he would rather not do anything wrong, whether on a moral or an artistic level. He is what you would call a man of conscience — not necessarily of judgment, but of conscience. I don't know any actors like that."

"He has the attention span of a bolt of lightning."

"He is the most private man I've ever known. He has a moat and a drawbridge which he lets down only occasionally."

"He makes it look so easy, and he looks so wonderful, that everybody assumes he isn't acting."

"The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films."

"Twenty-five years ago I couldn't walk down the street without being recognized. Now I can put a cap on, walk anywhere and no one pays me any attention. They don't ask me about my movies and they don't ask me about my salad dressing because they don't know who I am. Am I happy about this? You bet."

"A man with no enemies is a man with no character."

"Money won is twice as sweet as money earned."

"Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it."

"To be an actor, you have to be a child."

"People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked."

"It's like chasing a beautiful woman for 80 years. Finally, she relents and you say, "I am terribly sorry. I'm tired.""

"You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: "Holy Christ, whaddya know — I'm still around!" It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career."

"I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film, "The Silver Chalice," and now I'm playing a crusty old man who's an animated automobile [in "Cars"]. That's a creative arc for you, isn't it?"

"Study your craft and know who you are and what's special about you. Find out what everyone does on a film set, ask questions and listen. Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society."

"I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge" comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close... but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about."

"Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?"

"I'm like a good cheese. I'm just getting mouldy enough to be interesting."

"I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking."

"The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it's flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realize that they're mixing me up with the roles I play — characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am."

"I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood."

"Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experiences."

"I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business."

"I was terrorized by the emotional requirements of being an actor. Acting is like letting your pants down; you're exposed."

"I've repeatedly said that for people as little in common as Joanne and myself, we have an uncommonly good marriage. We are actors, we make pictures — and that's about all we have in common. Maybe that's enough. Wives shouldn't feel obligated to accompany their husbands to a ball game, husbands do look a bit silly attending morning coffee breaks with the neighbourhood wives when most men are out at work. Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends — and not impose one upon the other."

"I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried — tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out."

"Steve Weinberg was giving the gauge seminar one Wednesday and was, as I recall nearly finished or just finishing his talk. Sidney had not arrived. So-Young Pi asked Steve a question and Steve replied (as I recall) “That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer; I haven’t thought about it.” At that exact instant Sidney enters the room, hears Steve’s reply, heads for the coffee pot, and says “I know the answer; what’s the question?” He was told the question, and he answered it. (Correctly, of course.)"

"If you haven't read his Erice Lectures, you don't know the heights that scientific writing can attain."

"Sidney Coleman was not only a leader in theoretical particle physics, but also a hugely gifted and dedicated teacher. In his courses he found just the right balance between rigor and intuition, enlivened by wit, humor and a deep store of anecdotes about the history of physics. Very often these were first-hand accounts; if he wasn't a participant, he was an eyewitness."