I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It’s not academic for me.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything… to know what’s going on so I can feel like I’m in control.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

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.

People tend to think that because I’m a performer and I don’t go to a regular high school that I haven’t personally been affected by bullies. But it’s actually quite the contrary.

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

The 14th Amendment was recognized right away to be problematic. The concept of person was both too narrow and too broad, and the courts went to work to overcome both of those flaws.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

I mean, I went to a Catholic boys‘ school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

There is no way I would ask others to go on a Virgin Galactic flight if I didn’t feel it was safe enough for myself.

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

When the external factors over which one has no control in a way start to become negative, it starts to affect our creative juices.

We need to incorporate that age-old concept of redemption into the work that we do in the criminal justice system in California.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

I never give advice unless someone asks me for it. One thing I’ve learned, and possibly the only advice I have to give, is to not be that person giving out unsolicited advice based on your own personal experience.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

I believe that one person can make a difference.

Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of spiritual force.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

When I was little… I didn’t relate to princesses. I saw Maleficent, and I just thought she was so – she was so elegant.

Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.

I don’t do research. I never have.

I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!

I have been a youngster and I know speeches are boring.

I grew up in New Orleans. I had just moved into my dorm at the University of New Orleans, and I was doing laundry, and my mom called me, like, ‚We’ve got to evacuate. There’s a hurricane’s coming.‘

I was hit by a car once on my bike, but I still rode home.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

I can honestly say – and it’s a big surprise to me – that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

The fact is that when you do something from your heart, you leave a heart print.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

The truth of it is that every singer out there with songs on the radio is raising the next generation, so make your words count.

In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

I didn’t read so much Japanese literature. Because my father was a teacher of Japanese literature, I just wanted to do something else.