For me, it’s about becoming a mogul, owning my own projects, and establishing myself as a funding producer. That’s what’s big to me. The movies and all that stuff are great, but the fact that I’m in a position to do what I want to do, however I want to do it and when I want to do it is bigger.

My children came out as individuals in their own right. They were not my products. They had their own characters and were very strong-minded. I gave them a lot of freedom when they were still very young. The one thing they got from me is morals. They would never betray anyone. They are really good people.

Politics is just a function of business now, just a tributary of the great entrepreneurial capitalist system.

You don’t have to be like everybody else or do things like everybody else. God created you to be a unique individual, and He wants you to be free to be who He made you to be.

Stand-up comedy is mine: it’s my entity; it’s my brand; I own it. I do it when I want to do it.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

I’m not one icon. I’m every icon. I’m an icon that is made out of all the colors on the palette at every time. I have no restrictions. No restrictions.

But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.

People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that’s pretty much all you can ask.

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.

I knew early on that I wanted to entertain in some form. And I knew I would work as hard as anyone to do it.

Each time we cooperate with God, we take one more giant step forward. Because when God asks us to change, it means that He always has something better to give us – more freedom, greater joy, and greater blessings.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

You don’t have to turn on the TV set. You don’t have to work on the Internet. It’s up to you.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

You just don’t wake up one day and decide that you need to write songs.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

There’s a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you’re self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn’t so easy in a car, and you can’t cover as much ground walking.

I always wanted a great love affair: something that feels big and full, really honest, and enough. No moment should feel slight, false, or a little off. For me, it had to be everything.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

I’m really interested in smells. I think I’d like to own a perfumery someday.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.

Playing basketball all my life, I’ve collected a lot of different basketball shoes. It’s pretty much all I wear.

If you can build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

But, the thing is, since I always had my own little shop and direct access to the public, I’ve been able to build up a technique without marketing people ever telling me what the public wants.

I got an album concept called ‚Exit Strategy,‘ that might be one of my last ones. It’s a term they use in business when you build companies. You create an exit strategy as you make a company. You don’t wait till you’re five years in it; you create a exit strategy as you make the company.

People have more freedom to bring more of their personal qualities into the role they play once they have established themselves and their competence is no longer in question. But this is always within limits.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

When I’m in the studio, I’m looking for creativity I haven’t matched yet, a feeling I haven’t felt. It’s a high.

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

If you have passion, there is no need for excuses because your enthusiasm will trump any negative reasoning you might come up with. Enthusiasm makes excuses a nonissue.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

In my heart, I am always a Raider.

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

I don’t control my writing – it controls me.

I want to be a recording artist for my whole entire life. But Broadway is something I would come back to at any given moment. I love, love, love doing theater.

When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

I’m super serious about music. That’s, like, the only thing I’m serious about.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.