As a boy I believed freedom for America meant freedom for me. There was a time I believed every word spoken.

I really care about this stuff I care about movies and you just have to be strong and don't be stupid freedom of choice is a big responsibility and I'm lucky enough not to have to just take any movie to pay the rent so there's no need to be greedy.

The arc of American history almost inevitably moves toward freedom. Whether it's Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation the expansion of women's rights or now gay rights I think there is an almost-inevitable march toward greater civil liberties.

I have more freedom when I write fiction but my memoirs have had a much stronger impact on my readers. Somehow the 'message ' even if I am not even aware that there is one is conveyed better in this form.

I am a passionate believer in freedom of speech. I would not support anything which would impinge on aggressive robust freedom of the British press but when things go wrong and there has been outright illegality there should be proper accountability.

Religious tolerance is something we should all practice however there have been more persecution and atrocities committed in the name of religion and religious freedom than anything else.

I think we recognize as Americans there are certain things that are just primary to the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy here and religious freedom is one of the most important things we as Americans cherish.

When I was teaching in the 1960s in Boston there was a great deal of hope in the air. Martin Luther King Jr. was alive Malcolm X was alive great great leaders were emerging from the southern freedom movement.

There are forces all around you who wish to exploit division rob you of your freedom and tell you what to think. But young folks can rekindle the weary spirit of a slumbering nation.

Now do I think there has to be shared sacrifice among other nations in the world who want a stable and secure world? Absolutely there has to be. But I don't think that America can ever abdicate its leadership role in the world because of who we are and where we've come from. We are the symbol for the world for freedom and liberty.

If you don't mind haunting the margins I think there is more freedom there.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

Bush sees the evil as out there in the wider world residing in people who 'hate freedom'. Look at his immediate response to the pictures of prisoner abuse this is not what Americans do these are not our values.

The United States and Israel have a unique relationship based on our mutual commitment to democracy freedom and peace. Therefore just as our commitment to these principles must be steadfast so must our support for Israel.

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty the noblest cause of them all.

There must be freedom for all to live to think to worship no book no avenue must be closed.

Human beings want to be free and however long they may agree to stay locked up to stay oppressed there will come a time when they say 'That's it.' Suddenly they find themselves doing something that they never would have thought they would be doing simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom.

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy just allowing myself to tell jokes allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for and sometimes winning and sometimes losing the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and more generally for freedom of speech.

I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.

In the literal sense there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights justice and freedom - along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

America is just the country that how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

A lot of people out there pay good lip service to the idea of personal freedom... right up to the point that someone tries to do something that they don't personally approve of.