No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists.

I have spoken about inflation, unemployment, farmers‘ problems, security, etc. I keep talking about these issues. I seek answers from the Indian government.

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.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

I believe in a passion for inclusion.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

I feel that there are a few things in the world without cultural barriers.

Pakistan is not a unified country.

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.

I love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.

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.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

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

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don’t share that belief.

I did not learn the flaws of the criminal-justice system in law school or college or by reading about it. I grew up knowing the flaws and how it was disproportionately impacting the black community. It’s not academic for me.

Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

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 the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

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.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.

We are all alike, on the inside.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

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

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

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.

If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

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.

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

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

We boil at different degrees.

It’s very strange to go to cities like London and New York. People walk so quickly, they seem to be in a hurry all the time. And you don’t say ‚Hi‘ to everyone you meet, and you don’t smile to everyone you meet, because there’s just so many. Which is also very strange.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?