The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.

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

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it's like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.

As an actor you just want to work and then you just want to be on a show or have a job that you love and you hope that job will last - those things have happened. To have that platform to then talk about something that is very personal to me like marriage equality it feels like a gift. I try and really respect that voice and not abuse it.

Well my personal mission statement is that we want marriage equality in all 50 states. We want it not to be a state-by-state issue. We don't want it to be something the majority is voting on. I don't think the civil rights of any minority should be in the hands of any majority.

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth technical power and nationalism.

Women's rights is not only an abstraction a cause it is also a personal affair. It is not only about us it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.

But reducing harmful emissions abating our dependence on foreign oil and developing alternative renewable energy sources have benefits that go beyond environmental health they improve personal health enhance national security and encourage our nation's economic viability.

Education has fundamentally changed my life. It's perhaps the mission of my life. I'm wed to it in a very powerful and personal way. And I chose the pathway that I believe could make me the most significant on changing the outcomes that we see now in North Carolina.