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

Be happy with being you. Love your flaws. Own your quirks. And know that you are just as perfect as anyone else, exactly as you are.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

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.

Fear is exciting for me.

My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit as well as physically.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman’s equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we’re alive it’s not going to change. You’ve got to be boisterous to get results.

Selling out is doing something you don’t really want to do for money. That’s what selling out is.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.

Friends accept you the way you are.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

Everybody has talent, it’s just a matter of moving around until you’ve discovered what it is.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The beauty of me being on stage is I have a voice.

Deficiency motivation doesn’t work. It will lead to a life-long pursuit of try to fix me. Learn to appreciate what you have and where and who you are.

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.

This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

In my heart, I’m confident I could make a good president.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

When I say something’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.

Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

I’m not afraid to look bad on the screen.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

If you’re trying too hard to be the girl next door, you’re not going to be.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Once you feel loved by the universe, you’re already accepted, and you’re not really concerned about offending people.

I will not be triumphed over.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.

The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.

I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them. I was surrounded by extraordinary women in my life who taught me about quiet strength and dignity.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

It is our duty as men and women to proceed as though the limits of our abilities do not exist.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.