People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young, old; gay, straight; men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance under the same proud flag to this big, bold country that we love. That’s what I see. That’s the America I know!

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a Yeti.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

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

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying. They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

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.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

There are some loony people in this world!

That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.

People love conspiracy theories.

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.

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

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.

For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Children are all foreigners.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

Coffee is a language in itself.

Before I became a film major, I was very heavily into social science, I had done a lot of sociology, anthropology, and I was playing in what I call social psychology, which is sort of an offshoot of anthropology/sociology – looking at a culture as a living organism, why it does what it does.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

Everybody’s journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.

Today, writers want to impress other writers.

In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise.

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

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.

It’s amazing, the culture Coach Belichick has been able to create in our system.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

Being a Puerto Rican artist, I support all kinds of projects that are developed on my beautiful island that in some way or another put our Puerto Rican flag up.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

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

I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

In most communities it is illegal to cry ‚fire‘ in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?

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

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

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.