I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It’s not academic for me.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.

The human body is strange and flawed and unpredictable. The human body has many secrets, and it does not divulge them to anyone, except those who have learned to wait.

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike.

Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

The least movement is of importance to all nature. The entire ocean is affected by a pebble.

I can honestly say – and it’s a big surprise to me – that I have never had a dream about being on the moon.

Things don’t have to change the world to be important.

I don’t do research. I never have.

We can all be successful and make money, but when we die, that ends. But when you are significant is when you help other people be successful. That lasts many a lifetime.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.

Anyone that’s involved in development has discovered that all the good work that’s been done in development has been undone by the AIDS emergency.

I’ve been blessed with talents to play this game and been put on a stage to impact a lot of people. I don’t want to take that for granted.

If you really love films, and you really want to get the full impact, there’s a huge difference between watching something on a small screen with a mediocre sound system and watching it on a giant screen in a giant theater with a huge beautiful sound system. I mean, the difference is electric.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

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.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

I never give advice unless someone asks me for it. One thing I’ve learned, and possibly the only advice I have to give, is to not be that person giving out unsolicited advice based on your own personal experience.

For me, education has never been simply a policy issue – it’s personal. Neither of my parents and hardly anyone in the neighborhood where I grew up went to college. But thanks to a lot of hard work and plenty of financial aid, I had the opportunity to attend some of the finest universities in this country.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

As an entrepreneur, I have been known for taking risks throughout my career, but leaving the European Union is not one of the risks I would want the U.K. to take – not as an investor, not as a father, and not as a grandfather. I am deeply concerned about the impact of leaving.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.

I strongly believe that for serious and violent criminals, we must absolutely hold them accountable for their crimes and send them to prison.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

‚Mean‘ is a song I wrote about somebody who wrote things that were so mean so many times that it would ruin my day. Then it would ruin the next day. And it would level me so many times, I just felt like I was being hit in the face every time this person would take to their computer.

There’s no doubt that inequality destabilizes societies. I think the social science evidence on that front is crystal clear.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

I’m very active on social media and see the huge impact it has on engaging with fans and being able to have a voice.

I have been a youngster and I know speeches are boring.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

I can’t consciously explain how people feel after reading my books. All is too personal.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

I have always enjoyed watching my songs make people cry.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software. We had dreams about the impact it could have.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

I come from a family of 12, so I kind of got a little lost as a child.

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

I think all women go through periods where we hate this about ourselves, we don’t like that. It’s great to get to a place where you dismiss anything you’re worried about. I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.