The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency.

I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief.

The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

That is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women.

I don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

What turns me on about the digital age, what excited me personally, is that you have closed the gap between dreaming and doing. You see, it used to be that if you wanted to make a record of a song, you needed a studio and a producer. Now, you need a laptop.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone – and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

I like to always lead from the front and set an example for whoever is playing with me or around me. I like taking responsibilities. That is my natural thing.

I often get ideas for songs on the tour bus at odd times. Like at 6am when no one is around, I’d just write.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

My desire to devolve authority has nothing to do with a wish to shirk responsibility.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out.

I find that when I get on stage now, I don’t want to perform a lot of my songs because they don’t feel like me. So I want to make songs that are timeless.

By most accounts, Aristide is the most popular figure in Haiti.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

The trouble with Nixon is that he’s a serious politics junkie. He’s totally hooked and like any other junkie, he’s a bummer to have around, especially as President.

But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

If you call yourself a leader, then you have to be decisive. If you’re decisive, then you have the chance to be a leader. These are two sides to the same coin.

The onus is on the managers to send out an attacking formation and to tell their players to be bold.

Art is not a treasure in the past or an importation from another land, but part of the present life of all living and creating peoples.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

Originality is really important.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

When I write, I write about my surroundings. Sometimes it’s light, and sometimes it gets very dark.

You know, as a writer, I’m more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Science is the captain, and practice the soldiers.

I enjoy being involved in making the artwork for albums and stupid stuff like that.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules.

My celebrity status allows me an opportunity, allows me a pulpit to preach and reach out to the people. Not even always preaching but just leading, motivating them by being a leader.

It’s empowering to know I am doing something, I am taking a stand, I am disrupting.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.