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.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

How is it possible for someone who believes that the world was created in six days to have a rational conversation with me, who doesn’t believe that, about other possibilities?

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

There are really two core principles at play here. There’s giving people a voice so that people can express their opinions. Then, there’s keeping the community safe, which I think is really important. We’re not gonna let people plan violence or attack each other or do bad things.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.

Sure it’s a big job; but I don’t know anyone who can do it better than I can.

The American people have not become heartless.

I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.

Part of your heritage in this society is the opportunity to become financially independent.

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

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.

We proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it’s just doing it.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

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.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

We shall probably get nearest to the truth if we think of the conscious and personal psyche as resting upon the broad basis of an inherited and universal psychic disposition which is as such unconscious, and that our personal psyche bears the same relation to the collective psyche as the individual to society.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Prejudices are what fools use for reason.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

I like working-class people, generally speaking.

I love singing. I love it, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It’s an expression.

My aim is to create a happy society with genuine friendship. Friendship between Tibetan and Chinese peoples is very essential.

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

I am not a fan of books.

We have a natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Let the path be open to talent.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

Americans are apocalyptic by nature. The reason why is that we’ve always had so much, so we live in deadly fear that people are going to take it away from us.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.