There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

Your timeless self does not age and has no fear of the future. Contemplate your physical self and all its possessions, and practice laughing peacefully at it all.

When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

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.

In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.

We boil at different degrees.

I don’t regret anything.

I look out at the stadiums full of people and see them all knowing the words to songs I wrote. And curling their hair! I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny. And wonderful.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

I’m fat, but I’m thin inside… there’s a thin man inside every fat man.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

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

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

I am who I am. That’s why my friends and peers respect and appreciate me. I don’t change or cater my actions to fit my surroundings. I’m myself 24/7. People appreciate that.

Over the holidays, and even during filming, I realized that I actually like my body, even if it’s not perfect according to the book. I just feel sexy. For the first time, I don’t want to get rid of the curves. I just want to tone it up. My body is comfortable, and it’s not unhealthy, so I’m going to rock with it.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

Won’t it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

My philosophy is it’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never.

Don’t try to be like Jackie. There is only one Jackie. Study computers instead.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I learned, when I look in the mirror and tell my story, that I should be myself and not peep whatever everybody is doing.

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

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.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

I specifically did not read other First Ladies‘ books, because I didn’t want to be influenced by how they defined the role. I knew that I would have to find this role – very uniquely and specifically to me and who I was.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

As much as I’m a black person from America, I’m a black person from Africa, too.

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?

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

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.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

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

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

You know, I just do whatever feels right to me! And so that’s what you’re gonna get!

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

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.

India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.