There are as many opinions as there are experts.

Here in America, we don’t let our differences tear us apart. Not here. Because we know that our greatness comes from when we appreciate each other’s strengths, when we learn from each other, when we lean on each other, because in this country, it’s never been each person for themselves. No, we’re all in this together. We always have been.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

I will meet my countrymen. I understand only one language: that they are my countrymen, they are my brothers. You may see with whatever colour you want; Modi will not go into that colour.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

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

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

I’m a human being. I’ve got opinions, I’m not always right, I’m not always on time, I don’t always say things in the proper way, but my intentions are always extremely pure.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

The one thing that ‚Via Dolorosa‘ has is no opinions. To me, curiosity is 50 times as valuable as opinion.

We boil at different degrees.

‚I am‘ is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that ‚I do‘ is the longest sentence?

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.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

A man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.

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

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.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

Don’t say I hate institutionalised religion – rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I’m saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.

Racism is real in this country.

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.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

I’m doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

Romcoms are hard in a lot of ways: they’re built to be buoyant. It’s easy to demean them.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

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

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.

I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.

Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say ‚oral method‘ to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say ‚sign language‘ to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

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.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

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

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.