Quotes from Richard Dreyfuss

We mistake politics for legislative debate. You can be passionate without being personal.

I have withdrawn from partisan politics. I am a constitutionalist who believes that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be central and the parties must be peripheral.

Trump is an intemperate, mean-spirited, lying bully. If a man like that asked you for permission to marry your daughter, what would your answer be? If it's no, I think it's obvious we shouldn't give him the most powerful office on the face of the Earth.

It is an obvious and blatant stupidity beyond my ability to articulate how dumb it is for us not to teach our children how to run the government.

By telling my own story, I hope to help remove the stigma. It never should be something to hide.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a teacher, a history teacher. After all, teaching is very much like performing. A teacher is an actor, in a way. It takes a great deal to get, and hold, a class.

Happiness has a bad rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should.

We mistake politics for legislative debate. You can be passionate without being personal.

We need to get back to reasoning and thinking things through. The future generation is being brought up in greed and without a true understanding of civics. There is no more emphasis on knowledge and time. As a society we need to process ideas and understand what certain principles are based upon.

I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.'

Let's give some substance to patriotism. It may take a generation.

She did the best that we could be; she was perfectly charming and perfectly loving. She was a dream. And she was the kind of dream that you remember when you wake up smiling.

We have lost our faith in the powers that brought us this far—the powers of will, imagination, effort, and community.

The most important part of civics education is to turn students into active citizens.

Currently, without examples of civility, Americans tend to treat opposing views as the positions of enemies.

Power never turns power down, ever, unless institutionally demanded.

In my experience, it's usually up to the actor how a character is portrayed.

Happiness has a bad rap. People say it shouldn't be your goal in life. Oh, yes it should.

It must be remembered that the Bush White House has a separate talent for character assassination that must not be confused with a talent for governance.

I never had a role that I set out for. I always wanted to have a body of work that I'm proud of. Save for two projects, which will never pass my lips, I'm happy with what I've done.

I didn't understand 3-D in the fifties and I can't say I get it now either. I just don't see what the big deal is.

I think I have the finest body of work of any American actor.

Civility is not not saying negative or harsh things. It is not the absence of critical analysis. It is the manner in which we are sharing this territorial freedom of political discussion. If our discourse is yelled and screamed and interrupted and patronized, that's uncivil.

Isn't it funny that God takes you and puts you through the unendurable, and then, at the moment you have just begun to understand it and have some wisdom, it ends?