The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

I’ve always done whatever I want and always been exactly who I am.

All I can do is be me, whoever that is.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

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.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

I’m half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That’s why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I’ve seen so many.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

I just want to be myself.

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

When I arrived, at first a lot of people were like, ‚This kid is different.‘

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.

Women are the engine driving the growth in California’s economy. Women make California’s economy unique.

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Why don’t Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering.

If you see a black family, it’s looting, but if it’s a white family they are looking for food.

I believe in a passion for inclusion.

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

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature. But, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.

It’s a representation of yourself, and you can express a lot of your creativity with what your wearing.

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.

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.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

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

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

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.

I care about helping to address these problems of social cohesion and understanding what economic problems people think exist.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.