"The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other."

"The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality."

"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?"

"I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all."

"I couldn't be in a relationship and behave like somebody else or pretend I felt something I didn't feel. And that includes saying things I thought might jeopardize the relationship."

"New York City is a great monument to the power of money and greed... a race for rent."

"The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us."

"My songs are my kids. Some of them stay with me, some others I have to send out, out to the war. It might sound stupid and it might even sound naive, but that's just the way it is."