Humanity evolves when we realise that animals have the same rights to the Earth as we do.

I took an interest in the Civil Rights Movement. I listened to Martin Luther King. The Vietnam War was raging. When I was 18, I was eligible for the draft, but when I went to be tested, I didn't qualify.

When spirituality is the basis of your life, it gives you the strength, wisdom and courage to surmount the many storms of life that could destroy a weaker person who doesn't have this foundation.

In religion, there's a certain type of fear that if somebody believes differently from me, that it's a threat. Because I'm right, and there cannot be two ways that are right, so if I'm right, anything different than this must be wrong; and we attack those things and it's really due to insecurity, ego and fear.

I was brought up in a home environment where I was taught to think critically and was encouraged to seek answers to questions about my faith.

An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.

When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it.

What the F.D.I.C. does is to put the full faith and credit of the United States government behind every savings account in the nation, up to a limit that has changed over the years and stands now at $100,000.