Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

It’s a well-known fact that tall people are evil.

I can’t disguise myself with a wig and dark glasses – the wheelchair gives me away.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

I don’t want to be called a point guard, but I can’t stop it.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

I really do feel part of America to my very bones; at the same time, I know that I come from somewhere else.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

Society is at odds with itself.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

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.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

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.

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

Don’t say I hate institutionalised religion – rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I’m saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

One of the things that we’re trying to do with Creative Labs and all our experiences is explore things that aren’t all tied to Facebook identity. Some things will be, but not everything will have to be, because there are some sets of experiences that are just better with other identities.

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.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

Poverty is the mother of crime.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn’t picked me up.

There are some teams and logos you see, no matter where you are in the world, and you know exactly who they are and what they mean.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

I think there’s more women that watch me than men, but I don’t look at myself as just a minister to women. My ministry began that way, but I really feel like the Word of God is for everybody.

My mother never made me do anything for my brothers, like serve them. I think that’s an important lesson, especially for the Latino culture, because the women are expected to be the ones that serve and cook and whatever. Not in our family. Everybody was equal.