A solitary child growing up in Africa, you're really quite dependent on books.

Faith is not a rational thing, and yet to understand the universe, rationality alone will not give it to us. Our understanding of the universe must transcend the rational.

The word 'career' and 'actor' really don't fit in the same paragraph, let alone sentence. There is no career structure for actors.

The universe starts off with the Big Bang theory, and the first thing that emerged from the Big Bang is essentially hydrogen and then helium. And that's what combusts in stars. Finally, stars implode, and they build heavier elements out of that. And those heavier elements are reconstituted in the heart of other stars, eventually.

The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.

Democracy makes us articulate our views, defend them, and refine them.

My mother's studies stopped with the third year of primary school, my father with the first. They taught me a deep sense of duty. But nobody was involved in politics in my family.

A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.