If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

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.

When I take my kid to school, all the parents stop and stare.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

So while an incredible amount of progress has been made, on this fifth anniversary, I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you – and fight alongside you – until the job is done. Until New Orleans is all the way back, all the way.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

I love diversity.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

Music is one of the most powerful things the world has to offer. No matter what race or religion or nationality or sexual orientation or gender that you are, it has the power to unite us.

We boil at different degrees.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

College isn’t the place to go for ideas.

In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

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.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

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.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‚I’m not interested,‘ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

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

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other ‚studies‘ was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these ‚studies‘ are about propaganda rather than serious education.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Whether we are New Dealer, Old Dealer, Liberty Leaguer or Red, whether we agree or not, we still have the right to think and speak how we feel.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

It seems almost backwards to me that my music seems the more emotional outlet, and the art stuff seems more about ideas.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.