A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.

I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

I think the Internet is a huge positive.

Our kids will never have to remember things, because it's all in pictures. Want to remember your fourth birthday? There'll be video of it on your phone.

My goal is to get another 30 years out of this business. So I need to figure out the fuel to do that. And so far, I think it's respect and quality and company, not celebrity or box office or stardom. It's not a sprinter's approach. It's more like a long-distance thing. You can stick around a lot longer if you kind of slow-play it.

People have often asked if I'm gay because I don't go out of my way to spit and scratch and give people attitude.

It's not new: In the '70s, Archie Bunker said terrible things on 'All in the Family,' but it was all in Carroll O'Connor's performance. You saw lack of intelligence, and you laughed.

I think anybody who's doing work in their teen years on TV or in the movies, you're a teen idol by default.

People still come up to me and say, 'Hey, 'Teen Wolf!' 'Teen Wolf Too' closed a week after it opened. Where did they see it?

The comedy community is very friendly right now. I think that's why you see all the synergy and people doing each other's movies.

Not a lot of people get a second chance. And I think for a while there, my name kind of got in my way a bit, based on all of the television I was fortunate enough to do. But after a while, you sort of wear out your welcome in that genre, in that medium.

My sense of humor lies a little closer to the middle.

My family is pretty funny. My mother is British, so she's got a very dry sense of humor. That's where I got that from.

If your computer speaks English, it was probably made in Japan.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word 'frustration'.

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach students to program. What fun is there to making plans, acquiring discipline, organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self critical.

You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing vitality of FORTRAN.

A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.

Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.

Religion is everywhere. There are no human societies without it, whether they acknowledge it as a religion or not.

Every story I write adds to me a little, changes me a little, forces me to reexamine an attitude or belief, causes me to research and learn, helps me to understand people and grow.

People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.

Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed, and, if we're as intelligent as we like to think we are, never abandoned.

When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.

I'm very happy alone.

I think we need people with stronger ideals than John Kerry or Bill Clinton. I think we need people with more courage and vision.

At school I was always taller than the rest of my class, and because I was an only child, I was comfortable with adults but shy and awkward with other kids. I was quiet, bookish, and in spite of my size, hopeless at sports. In short, I was different. And even in the earliest grades, I got pounded for it.

A 10-pound sack of potatoes lasts a long time.

I'm a very positive person. I get excited easily, and I like to jump around.

I'm into sincerity in music and sincerity in art. If it doesn't feel true, I don't want to do it. Things that are too dramatic scare me. I think that's why I don't always fit into the world of performing arts.

One thing I love about Christmas music is that it has a tradition of warmth.

I love singing Christmas carols. I know every harmony to every music-hall Christmas song.

Classic Christmas cookies are really time-consuming. Instead, make a bar you can bake in a pan and just cut up, like a brownie or a blondie or a shortbread, which still has that Christmas vibe.

I went to Northwestern because I had gone to a really nontraditional high school. I was like, 'It'd be cool to have a traditional college experience.' Then I was like, 'Oh, but none of these people understand what's cool about me. My specialness is not appreciated in this place.'

I just like music that sounds like music. Not like machines and computers and things that you design to make things sound slick and perfect.

If people just want to be famous, that's just not enough to get you up at 4 in the morning to go to work. You have to love what you're doing.

I like romantic comedy as a genre, but I think it can get stuck in its ways.

Romantic comedies are usually about when love works.

I'm a romantic, but I'm not a romantic in the traditional sense. I like to romanticize what happens to me. Whatever happens to me - you could quantify it as good or bad - I romanticize it. I think along the lines of 'When that thing happened, it made me who I am.' That kind of thing. It's a different way of being romantic.

My nursery school did a production of 'The Three Little Pigs.' I played the third pig. When the wolf knocked on my door, I refused to get up and answer it because, to me, he was knocking the wrong way. I just lay there, snoring away on stage, fully immersed in my character. My dad turned to my mom and said: 'Dustin Hoffman.'

I wanted to be a child actor so bad that every day I'd beg my parents if I could audition, but my mom said, 'Not until you can drive yourself to auditions.'

I don't know why femininity should be associated with weakness. Women should be free to express who they are without thinking, 'I need to act like a man, or I need to tone it down to be successful.' That's a very good way to keep women down.

I gravitate towards happy music. I love the Beach Boys.

I like old movies, screwball comedies, vintage clothes, and basically I'm an old-fashioned gal.

It's nice that there are movies and songs about romance - it's what motivates us as human beings. I'm all for being brainwashed by rom-coms.

Making movies, you're like an independent contractor - you come in, you have a specific job, and a lot of what you do is completely manipulated, which is good and bad.