The little man is still a man.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

To the women and children, T stands for tender. To the bad guys and thugs, it stands for tough.

So what we’re talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we’re facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

What really matters is how God sees me. He isn’t concerned with labels; he is concerned about the state of man’s soul.

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

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.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

I’ve said very clearly, including in a State of the Union address, that I’m against ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and that we’re going to end this policy.

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

I want a president with a record of public service: someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase form and fortune for ourselves; we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

I think the American people, with some justification, think that most politicians live in la-la land.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Science is nothing but perception.

If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

I don’t even call them fans. I don’t like that. They’re literally just a part of my life; they’re a part of my family. I don’t think of them as on a lower level than me. I don’t think I’m anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they’re basically all of my siblings.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Proud 2 Pay – that’s something that distinguishes me, that’s something that defines me, and we’re going to keep that going.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.