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.

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

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

That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life – I don’t mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

No, I’m not anguished and tormented.

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

The United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

I feel real good because it’s about representing the young world and how to uplift each other and how to push us to be greater and make sure we don’t fall or get trapped or get in trouble, you know what I mean. Stay focused, you know what I mean.

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

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.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

True praise comes often even to the lowly; false praise only to the strong.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

I feel like the way I was raised was to be able to see through all the titles in this world – from religion to race.

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

Any experience that touches you, in any particular way, is good. It can be a horrible experience.

The United States, to state the obvious, is greatly concerned by the startling number of unaccompanied minors that – children and teenagers who are making a very perilous journey through Central America to reach the United States.

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

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.

There are those who believe Black people possess the secret of joy and that it is this that will sustain them through any spiritual or moral or physical devastation.

Do the best you can, and don’t take life too serious.

When I was growing up, there were no women in orchestras. Auditioners thought they could tell the difference between a woman playing and a man. Some intelligent person devised a simple solution: Drop a curtain between the auditioners and the people trying out. And, lo and behold, women began to get jobs in symphony orchestras.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

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

I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

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.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

A cat is only itself, representative of the strong forces of life that won’t let go.

All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

The God of this world is riches, pleasure and pride.

China is a great manufacturing center, but it’s actually mostly an assembly plant. So it assembles parts and components, high technology that comes from the surrounding industrial – more advanced industrial centers – Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the United States, Europe – and it basically assembles them.

We’re not a fragile people. We’re not a frightful people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way. We don’t look to be ruled.

The nice thing is that when people come up to me, it’s the football they remember, not all the other rubbish.

Only by contending with challenges that seem to be beyond your strength to handle at the moment you can grow more surely toward the stars.

Chinese military spending is carefully monitored by the United States.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It’s got a bit busier since the ’60s, but the more the merrier!

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

Iraq is a long way from the U.S., but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.