The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he’s an American child.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

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

It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Racism is real in this country.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

I believe in a passion for inclusion.

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

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.

I certainly respect the belief of the Hobby Lobby owners. On the other hand, they have no constitutional right to foist that belief on the hundreds and hundreds of women who work for them who don’t share that belief.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

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

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.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

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.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I’m tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro – that’s the Scotch-Irish part.

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.

Everyone does things differently on offense. Everyone’s goal is to score points.

I see Americans of every party, every background, every faith who believe that we are stronger together: black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American; young, old; gay, straight; men, women, folks with disabilities, all pledging allegiance under the same proud flag to this big, bold country that we love. That’s what I see. That’s the America I know!

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don’t get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

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.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

We boil at different degrees.

Now, as a nation, we don’t promise equal outcomes, but we were founded on the idea everybody should have an equal opportunity to succeed. No matter who you are, what you look like, where you come from, you can make it. That’s an essential promise of America. Where you start should not determine where you end up.

Because I was suspicious of the traditional Christian church, I tended to tar them all with the same brush. That was a mistake, because there are righteous people working in a whole rainbow of belief systems – from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters to charismatic Catholics.

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.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

Even in this globalised world, London is still the standard for our times. The city has embraced the world’s diversity and represents the finest in human achievements.

Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the ‚human stratum‘ may not be homogeneous.

Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

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.

I want to support other women because of the opportunities I’ve had – and I’ve had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.

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.