It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

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.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

I definitely think, generally, rap is misogynistic.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

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.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

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.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

My age is very insignificant to me. I don’t think about it, but the world does. The world likes young people in general.

It’s considered acceptable in our culture to approach perfect strangers, as often or not who may be in extremis, and evangelise. I don’t see why that’s considered a normal thing.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

People love conspiracy theories.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

India does not need to become anything else. India must become only India. This is a country that once upon a time was called the golden bird.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

I feel Anglo-American.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

We live in a bewildering world.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

In Puerto Rico we dance to everything.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, ‚black feminist‘ does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it’s just… womanish.

What you’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street and the others are people who are unhappy and they’re directing their unhappiness now toward Wall Street and toward those they think are doing too well in our society.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

Hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it’s just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.

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

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

Dancing was always part of my culture growing up in Barbados. When I shot my 1st video I worked really hard with my choreographer to perfect the routines.

I’m not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it’s almost like we’re living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it’s like a big reality show.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

One of the things that I have admired about India is the spiritualism of the people.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

Free speech has been used by the Supreme Court to give immense power to the wealthiest members of our society.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.