It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

Eternal principles that govern happiness apply equally to all.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

How young can you die of old age?

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.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

At the beginning when the child is coming, people worry the child may be deformed. When a healthy boy or child comes, people are very happy for a short moment.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

I don’t ascribe to myself any special competence in economic insight. I translate what I hear from highly intelligent people into political and philosophical propositions.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

I actually feel more of a woman because I feel like I’m being smart about my choices, and I’m putting my family first, and I’m in charge of my life and my health. I think that’s what makes a woman complete.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Barack Obama would not be President if he were dark skin. You know what I mean? That’s just the truth. I might not be as successful as I am now if I was dark skin.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

There is no sin except stupidity.

What really matters is how God sees me. He isn’t concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man’s soul.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

The less you know, the more you believe.

That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.

I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today, so beauty is something that changes with time.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

That’s the biggest gift I can give anybody: ‚Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you’re doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.‘

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.