A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Politics have no relation to morals.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

Governments don’t control people like they used to.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

People love conspiracy theories.

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic.

The American people have not become heartless.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone – except God.

The mob is the mother of tyrants.

America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

I started out in anthropology, so to me how society works, how people put themselves together and make things work, has always been a big interest.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

If people lose faith in their government, the result is the same whether or not the loss of confidence is justified.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

If you’re not producing as much as you consume, or perhaps a little more, then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

French is the language that turns dirt into romance.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Everybody is entertained to death.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.