The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

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

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

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.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can’t knock it.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

I always liked different things, rare things.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.

Whatever that means, however you got on that mountain, why not try to climb it? And do it in your own way.

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

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.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

The people you choose to have around you make all the difference. My family and close friends keep me grounded. You have to have a mind of your own and a strong head on your shoulders. Cricket is the most important thing to me, so the rest of it pales in comparison.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

The day will come – and it is not far off – when the legacy of Lincoln will finally be fulfilled at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when a black man or woman will sit in the Oval Office. When that day comes, the most remarkable thing about it will be how naturally it occurs.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

People like to talk about war.

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

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

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

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

Every band I’ve worked with also wants to be countercultural in the sense that they want to feel that they’ve gone somewhere that nobody else has been.