Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

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.‘

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.

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.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

It’s a well-known fact that tall people are evil.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

If you see a black family, it’s looting, but if it’s a white family they are looking for food.

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

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

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.

International summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

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.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

My mother always used to say, ‚Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go to church or go to worship Allah, but surely if those people are worshipping a God, it must be the same God‘ – that’s what she always said. The same God with different names.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology accepts blacks in the top ten percent of students, but at MIT this puts them in the bottom ten percent of the class.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that’s been discriminated against, knows what it’s like.

NATO’s essentially run by the United States.

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

The U.N. charter bars the threat of force.

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.

Foreigners don’t want to invest any more in France – and this is not working.

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.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

The Bush Administration’s failure to be consistently involved in helping Israel achieve peace with the Palestinians has been both wrong for our friendship with Israel, as well as badly damaging to our standing in the Arab world.

I can’t help the way you was born if you was gay.

Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.

There’s not going to be a World War III, because there is no one to have World War III with.

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.

In February 2004, the two traditional torturers of Haiti – France and the United States – combined to back a military coup and send President Aristide off to Africa. The U.S. denies him permission to return to the entire region.