My upbringing in Canada made me the person I am. I will always be proud to be a Canadian.

I try never to wear my own clothes, I pretend I’m someone else.

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don’t forget it.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn’t afford to pay attention.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I’m not who I say I am when it comes to my faith – something which I find deeply offensive, and that has been going on for a pretty long time.

I feel Anglo-American.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

We’re so trendy we can’t even escape ourselves.

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.

We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

I have dual citizenship, it just so happens I live in America.

I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else.

My folks ain’t graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family – and I come from a big family.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

What really motivates people at Facebook is building something that’s worthwhile, that they’re going to be proud to show to friends and family.

None of the records I make are ever a deliberate construction – they’re always an expression of who I am at the time and where I am in my life.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

When people get taken over by the ego to such an extent, there is nothing else in their mind except the ego. They can no longer feel or sense their humanity – what they share with other human beings, or even with other life forms on the planet. They are so identified with concepts in their minds that other human beings become concepts as well.

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.‘

My music seems to have a bigger mission than I have, which is very soothing but also very strange because people see more in me than I see, which can be terrifying.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

Me, as a person, I grow. I’m like a chameleon. You know? That is a gift and a curse for me. But more so a gift, because it never puts me in a box.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

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.

The greatest thrill in my life was to represent the United States of America.

People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.

At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

I’m a child of God first. Before I became a celebrity, I was baptized a Christian.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

There is a danger that threatens everyone in the church, all of us. The danger of worldliness. It leads us to vanity, arrogance and pride.

I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don’t think God categorizes sins.

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man’s pride in his work.

Truthfully, without over-egging it, as I often do, the library and journalism, those things made me who I am.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

One thing I just want to say to the military families – while you might not wear a uniform, I know – we all know, the nation knows – that you serve and sacrifice right alongside of your loved ones. And we are so grateful and proud of all of you for your service to this nation.

I am what I am. A fighter.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

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.

The person we believe ourselves to be will always act in a manner consistent with our self-image.