I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it’s so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

But there is a difference between cozying up to power and being close to power.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

There are many levels of Christianity. There are many notions about God. To believe that God is a person is just one of the notions of God that you can find in Christianity. So, we should not say that there is one Christianity. There are many Christianities.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

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’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

There is no unique picture of reality.

History is written by the victors.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

The best advice comes from people who don’t give advice.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.

If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

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.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

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.

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

I don’t think I would be interested in the climate at all if I had been like everyone else.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.