I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

How one life turns out is not dependent on what people do to us or what they don’t do for us.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.

Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.

The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.

Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

You always want your people to be proud of what you have accomplished.

My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn’t dare do themselves.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

People have this capacity within them to set the world straight.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you – gently, with love, and hand your life back to you.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Bring them on.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.

When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

I know I’m stronger in the songs than I really am. Sometimes I need to hear it myself. We all need to hear those empowering songs to remind us.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Freedom lies in being bold.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I think all women go through periods where we hate this about ourselves, we don’t like that. It’s great to get to a place where you dismiss anything you’re worried about. I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.

I am fearless.

A man makes you feel important – makes you glad you are a woman.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

Not one person can make or break what I’m doing, except me or God.

Feminism… I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, ‚Free to be You and Me.‘

We forge the chains we wear in life.

I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

We talk about this concept of openness and transparency as the high-level ideal that we’re moving towards at Facebook. The way that we get there is by empowering people to share and connect. The combination of those two things leads the world to become more open.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

If you deserve it, go get it.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

I want to appeal to everyone. Because I’m not saying I’m the best, but we the best.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘