The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

I like Tom Ford a lot because it’s so classic and has great quality. I wear a lot of Rag & Bone.

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

All of my music is honest.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

A sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

I don’t think people should be encouraged to look like Kate Moss; I think that’s unreasonable. I think the normal human body should be glorified. By the same token, if you need a stick to wash yourself, you’re not healthy.

Because my dad abused me, I was determined to never let a man tell me what to do. God clearly showed me that I needed to be a submissive wife if I wanted to be effective in ministry. The truth is, if we don’t learn to submit to authority, we won’t ever learn to submit to God.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.

I break ground. I trailblaze.

The age of a woman doesn’t mean a thing. The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

I have more suits than days of the year that I get to wear them.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

My fans kept asking where they could get clothes like Destiny’s Child’s, so it was only natural for us to do a clothing line.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

It’s every girl’s dream to be a cover girl!

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

One of the things that was really an issue was I did not want to just be a woman secretary of state. I wanted to be a secretary of a state who was a woman, but not just chosen for that particular reason.

The fact is that since you’re a divine creation who originated in the world of Spirit, you have exactly the right amount of smarts to accomplish all that you need and want to do while you’re here on earth. It’s all perfect… and so are you!

The worst thing I can be is the same as everybody else. I hate that.

I’m totally myself.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway.

Fashion is always of the time in which you live. It is not something standing alone. But the grand problem, the most important problem, is to rejeuvenate women. To make women look young. Then their outlook changes. They feel more joyous.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

I was everything an R&B singer wasn’t. I wasn’t in shape. I wasn’t a pretty boy.

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

I just dress like… I’m an old black man. Sorry! Like I’m an old Jewish black man. I just dress like it’s still the ’50s.

I write all of my own speeches.

Man does not control his own fate. The women in his life do that for him.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

I don’t feel much pressure to fit in. I never have. I’ve always just wanted to do my thing. I have really good friends and good family, and if I don’t fit in somewhere else, I fit in at home.

I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Robyn is who I am. Rihanna – that’s an idea of who I am.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

Everything is an open book. I don’t speak on other people’s hardship, but if it happened in my life or something that has been an experience on my particular journey, I’m going to talk about it. That’s what my fan base appreciates the most. I’m universal. You can relate to the things I say or that I go through.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.