We are a country that lacks riches. The Jewish brain, that's what we have. Everything that we've had and will have in this country is the direct and clear product of higher education. If we harm this system, we will drastically decline and cease to exist.
When I was 15, I worked as a bag boy in a grocery store. I also needed to walk old ladies to their car and put their bags in the car, and they would give me two dollars. I felt like the richest man in the world.
To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his cares; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.
The tradition is a fence around the law; tithes are a fence around riches; vows are a fence around abstinence; a fence around wisdom is silence.
My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.
My great-grandfather was a kola nut trader and the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death. My father was a businessman and politician. I was actually raised by my grandfather.
I don't come from a position that I am better than everybody; I come from a position that I had a tough upbringing. And I don't always highlight it, because I just never wanted to be that person with another rags to riches story.
It is one thing to hear about the forest and the river, but an entirely other experience to go there, to see the environment, and to appreciate the natural riches there first-hand.