David Geffen

The concept known as bal tashchit – ‘Do no destroy’ – has a special significance in Jewish tradition…We are constantly being warned in our faith that the capricious, thoughtless, wasteful destruction of the elements and creatures of the earth is wrong…We should remind ourselves daily of our responsibility to all aspects of creation.

Most of the artists were trying to make a living, trying to get laid, trying to figure out who they were. They weren’t trying to change the world. That’s what other people put on them. I knew all those people. I knew them all, intimately and well. Bob Dylan. I would say that Bob Dylan is as interested in money as any person I’ve known in my life. That’s just the truth.

I’m going to go down and take care of the bill. I’m not going to embarrass you, just let me do it. I had such a great time, I just want it to be my treat. [On returning after several minutes red faced] They won’t take my check, I don’t know what we’re going to do. [Robertson said ‘David, what we’ve spent here, we’re going to have to do a lot of dishes.’] I’m going to call Prince Rupert [Loewenstein] and ask him to call the hotel and tell them I’m good for it. Or maybe he can pay the bill and then I’ll pay him back or something. [Prince Rupert vouched for his credit and the hotel agreed to accept Geffen’s check.]

We all acquire damage as infants and children and we work on removing those scars all of our lives. You won’t heal everything, but what’s important is the work.

I quickly figured out [that] the one ability I’d better have is to create relationships.

[On being partners with Laura Nyro in Tuna Fish Music (Laura’s favorite food was Tuna Fish)] We became partners in this new publishing company.

Have not fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany claimed that they have attained similar results [as in U.S.S.R.]? Have not both been achieved at the price of privation and personal liberty sacrificed for the good of the state?

Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised.

How can a bureaucrat or a politician be trusted if he says loud words for the sake of Russia’s good while trying to take his funds, his money abroad?

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.

Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.

The argument for liberty is…an argument…against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.

I presume that each of us has the capacity to be a saint or a monster. The rest is up to us, although the circumstances of our lives impose complex conditions on such choices.

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

Tough love is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else.

If you think about the way the society works in general, it works pretty much the way the founding fathers said. The society should be governed by those who own it, and they intend to follow Adam Smith’s vile maxim. That’s at the core of things.

Europeans are dying out. Don’t you understand that? And same-sex marriages don’t produce children. Do you want to survive by drawing migrants? But society cannot adapt so many migrants.

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.

I support immediate financial assistance to the newly elected Palestinian president. Now, I don’t know what those numbers will be, and I don’t know how it’s going to be framed.

[Mexico] ripping off the US more than almost any other nation