The fact that over 50 per cent of the residents of Toronto are not from Canada, that is always a good thing, creatively, and for food especially. That is easily a city’s biggest strength, and it is Toronto’s unique strength.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

Going to a therapist is not something you do when you’re growing up as a street kid in Toronto.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

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 look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

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.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Say ‚Toronto‘ or ‚Ontario,‘ and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.

I can’t help the way you was born if you was gay.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

I think there’s more women that watch me than men, but I don’t look at myself as just a minister to women. My ministry began that way, but I really feel like the Word of God is for everybody.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful.

I always tell people that if I move anywhere it would be Toronto.

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.

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 think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation.

I’ve had a fan who made a painting of my face with her fingers. I have put it up in my room. It was sweet and very different.

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn’t matter. You said, ‚That’s an American‘ because there’s a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

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

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

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.

The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

Today different ethnic groups and different nations come together due to common sense.

Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.

There’s nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.

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

The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

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

What ‚multiculturalism‘ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

One of the things that I have admired about India is the spiritualism of the people.

Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don’t like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

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.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about – or as a ritual like filling up a car – but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.