The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

The ‚Billionaire‘ song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It’s funny.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

I found that the corridors of power in Delhi were littered with lobbies of various kinds.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

I’m substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They’re sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they’re hitting back and forth.

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.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

I think a father is important for everyone. If you don’t have, then maybe not so much. In the world today, it’s possible that you grow up with only one parent in the family.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

Lil Wayne, that’s my brother. Birdman, that’s family.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

That government is best which governs least.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

Without Cambodia, I may never have become a mother. Part of my heart is and will always be in this country. And part of this country is always with me: Maddox.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

I don’t write policy for my government.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family’s doctor should be – and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.

We will always be a family. Always.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

People do not make wars; governments do.

Children make your life important.

I think, because I started Virgin when I was a teenager, it has become a part of me, like my family, and I am motivated by ambition for it, almost as if it were a child.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

She got her looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

I think war is so incredibly backward, and I don’t think it’s intelligent, and it’s not sane. So why would you want to support it?

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.