All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

My great-grandfather and his two brothers fought at Gettysburg. They were in artillery, and they survived the war, thank goodness. So I revere what they did. I think their motivations were honorable when they undertook the war and participated in it along with other Southerners.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn’t matter if you have a beautiful face or not.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families – second families, perhaps I should say.

We boil at different degrees.

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

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.

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.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don’t share that belief.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

As much as I’m a black person from America, I’m a black person from Africa, too.

I am a beneficiary of the American people’s generosity, and I hope we can have comprehensive immigration legislation that allows this country to continue to be enriched by those who were not born here.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.

I don’t just listen to rap.

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.

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

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

My last name is originally Irish. I’m not exactly sure whereabouts it’s from, but I’ve got family branches that were traced back there.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

If you want to make computers that really work, create a design team composed only of healthy, active women with lots else to do in their lives, and give them carte blanche.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

I am the son of a freedom fighter, and a son of a freedom fighter automatically imbibes the value of democracy.

Honolulu is a melting pot.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

I’m going to try to unite all Americans.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It’s got a bit busier since the ’60s, but the more the merrier!

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

One of the things that we’re trying to do with Creative Labs and all our experiences is explore things that aren’t all tied to Facebook identity. Some things will be, but not everything will have to be, because there are some sets of experiences that are just better with other identities.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.