"I'm much more proud of being a father than being an actor."

"You can't undo the past... but you can certainly not repeat it."

"I'm staggered by the question of what it's like to be a multimilionaire. I always have to remind myself that I am."

"Mostly weight resistance training, almost an hour of cardio at least three times a week. I have a gym in my house in Los Angeles and a gym trailer that I can take on the road with me when I'm on location. At my house there's a very long steep driveway. I do wind sprints that kick my 50-year-old ass. It's part of my job. I have come to associate working out as work. Whenever I don't have to do it for films, I kind of slack off." - On what he does to stay in shape. (2005)

I am a sensitive guy. People think they know the real me, but they don't. And then they write things that make me sound like such a jerk.

I hate working out. I work out for films solely. I associate working out with films. As soon as they stop, I stop working out.

Fifty is the new forty. I always thought my best work would come in the years forty to sixty, if I was fortunate enough to hang around - and it is hard to stick around.

Who I am as a father is far more important to me than the public perception.

"I am baffled to understand why the things that I saw happening in Iraq, really good things happening in Iraq, are not being reported on."

(On Hudson Hawk) "I always thought it was a little ahead of its time, a little too hip for the room."

"I think the rules are going to have to change for me to ever run for public office. My checkered past will always keep me out of politics. If I ever did run I would run on the platform that I did all these bad things, but I no longer do them, and during the four years of being president or whatever office it might be, I would be good and serve my country. I want to serve my country."

"I'm a Republican only as far as I want a smaller government. I want less government intrusion. I want them to stop pissing on my money and your money - the tax dollars that we give fifty or forty per cent of every year, and I want them to be fiscally responsible, and I want those goddam lobbyists out of Washington. Do that and I'll say I'm a

Republican. But other than that, I want the government to take care of people who need help - like the kids in foster care, the half million kids in orphanages right now ... I want them to take care of the elderly and give them free medicine, give them whatever they need. There's tons, billions and billions of dollars, that are just being wasted. Okay? I hate government. I'm apolitical."

"Look at what happened to James Frey in the last two weeks. That's a great book and so is the follow-up book. And just because his publisher chose to say that these were memoirs, it took it out of being a great work of fiction ... to this guy having to go be sucker punched on Oprah by one of the most powerful women in television, just to grind her own axe about it. Hey, Oprah. You had President (Bill Clinton) on your show and if this prick didn't lie about a couple of things, I'm going to set myself on fire right now. James Frey is a writer, OK? He can write about whatever he wants. It's fiction. It's just shameful how he was treated in some of these things."

"I'm not an action hero anymore, and I think it would be inappropriate for me to compare anything that happens in Hollywood and the entertainment industry to the tragic loss of life on September 11th."

"I spoke to the Colombians. It's fine. I get passionate sometimes. I said Colombia because it was the first country to come to mind. The drug problem has as much to do with what's going on in this country. If there wasn't a demand, there wouldn't be a supply."

"I think what the United States, and everyone who cares about protecting the freedoms that the largest part of the free world now has, should do whatever it takes to end terrorism in the world and not just in the Middle East. I'm talking also about going to Colombia and doing whatever it takes to end the cocaine trade. It's killing this country. It's killing all the countries that coke goes into. I believe that somebody's making money on it in the United States. If they weren't making money on it, they would have stopped it. They could stop it in one day. It's just a plant that they grow, and these guys are growing it like it's corn or tobacco or any other thing. By the time it gets here, it becomes a billion dollar industry. And I think that's a form of terrorism as well."

"The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed. I mean, doesn't everybody want that?"

"I have zero interest in performing in films to try to convey any kind of message. My job is to be entertaining. There's a very different point of view about messages in films in Europe than there is in the States. Audiences rebel because they feel that they are being preached to."

"The movie is about these guys who do what they are asked for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom." - On his planned film about the Iraq war

"I thought about signing up but my friends told me I was too old. I called the White House, called President Bush and asked what I could do. So I got involved with the national foster care program."

"If you take guns away from legal gun owners then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys. Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her. You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs. You'd use a rock or tear one of these chairs out of the floor. Hey, maybe I've been watching too many Bruce Willis movies!"

"I'm always being accused of being a Hollywood Republican, but I'm not! I have just as many Democratic ideas as Republican ones. If they could build three fewer bombs every month and give the money to foster care, that would be great."

"The idea of serving my country remained in my mind. Over the past few years from varying sources - Time Magazine, books, and television - information began coming to my attention on Foster Care; its history and the current crisis of an antiquated system overburdened with 580,000 children who have no voice. Children need to be protected by interstate technology systems that can track placements, education, medical records and protect these children from predators traveling from state to state. I saw Foster Care as a way for me to serve my country in a system by which shining a little bit of light could benefit a great deal by helping kids who were literally wards of the government."

"Hair loss is God's way of telling me I'm human."

"Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms. They were all very important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or volcanoes happened. Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology. But there are people who interpret the Bible literally. Literally! I choose not to believe that's the way. And that's what makes America cool, you know?" (1998)

"I don't think my opinion means jack shit, because I'm an actor. Why do actors think their opinions mean more because you act? You just caught a break as an actor. There are hundreds - thousands - of actors who are just as good as I am, and probably better. Have you heard anything useful come out of an actor's mouth lately? Although I liked George Clooney's documentary on Darfur."

"They still haven't caught the guy that killed Kennedy. I'll get killed for saying this, but I'm pretty sure those guys are still in power, in some form. The entire government of the United States was co-opted."