I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

There is just no comparison between having a dinner date with a man and staying home playing canasta with the girls.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

I think there’s more women that watch me than men, but I don’t look at myself as just a minister to women. My ministry began that way, but I really feel like the Word of God is for everybody.

It is not so much our friends‘ help that helps us, as the confidence of their help.

Bob Marley isn’t my name. I don’t even know my name yet.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

I had a period in my life where I decided that I would never be bored again and that, if I had any free time at all, I would make plans, and I would always be doing things. It actually was great for a year or so, but then I lost all of my friends.

If you feel that there’s the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can’t, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you’d be a very strange person indeed.

You can use your real identity, or you can use phone numbers for something like WhatsApp, and pseudonyms for something like Instagram. But in any of those you’re not just sharing and consuming content, you are also building relationships with people and building an understanding of people.

Often people become our friend or follower with an undercurrent of resentment in our having more success than they have. They secretly desire the opportunity to take us down a notch; they have a nose for any misstep on our part they can exploit.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

As a child, I wanted to know how things worked and to control them. With a friend, I built a number of complicated models that I could control.

I’ve always wanted male friends that I could be real intimate with and talk about important things with and be as affectionate with that person as I would be with a girl.

It pays to know the enemy – not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

A friend in power is a friend lost.

I don’t really regard myself as a political figure.

In this country, it doesn’t make any difference where you were born. It doesn’t make any difference who your parents were. It doesn’t make any difference if, like me, you couldn’t even speak English until you were in your twenties.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

It was weird to be married; you kind of lose your identity. You’re suddenly somebody’s wife. And you’re like, ‚Oh, I’m half of a couple now. I’ve lost me.‘

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

I do things I love doing. Sometimes that is maybe going out to have a drink with friends, going out partying or whatever.

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.