Certainly, there are very few wholly original ideas in the world; there are usually people coming to the same conclusions or carrying out experiments, whether publicly or privately.

I think, when people hear the word 'philosophy,' they think of Plato and a bunch of people sitting around in their robes pontificating about life and how it should be. But really, somebody who is an active philosopher should not only be thinking of these things but putting them into practice.

One thing I will say about my father is that he was very much out in the forefront talking about his beliefs about being a complete fighter and attaching a philosophy to that and teaching it.

We preserve the legacy of my father through an education approach. We award scholarships. We do classes at schools about my father's philosophy and life.

At a big company, often size turns into constipation; it fogs the lens about what's really happening. Sometimes with size and success comes the notion that since we've done things to be successful, we have the formula and can institutionalize it. That can be death.

All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer. art is an action against death. It is a denial of death.

The eternal link between Lincoln's life and Passover - the fact that Lincoln's death, marked in the Hebrew calendar, coincides with Passover every year - is certainly fitting, and perhaps even part of the providence that Lincoln began to see in his own life and the life of his nation.

My parents were mourning the death of my sister. She was killed in a car accident before I was born, and I didn't know she existed until I was 13 or 14 years old. I knew I was growing up in a house where people were angry and sad.