We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn’t make your house look any better.

I’m telling you there is hope. I have seen it, but it does not come from the governments or corporations. It comes from the people.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

I can relax with bums because I am a bum. I don’t like laws, morals, religions, rules. I don’t like to be shaped by society.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

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.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

I don’t just listen to rap.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

There are a lot of groups that feel a little bit strange around me, because I am inclusive.

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

I love wearing whatever is comfortable, and that could be something which was in trend years ago. So, I don’t follow fashion.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.

We cannot live being obsessed with what other people think about us. It’s impossible to live like that. Not even God managed to please the entire world.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

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

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.‘

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand! It’s the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.

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

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

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

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.

Rituals are important. Nowadays it’s hip not to be married. I’m not interested in being hip.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

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

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

When I’m ready to fight, my opponent has a better chance of surviving a forest fire wearing gasoline drawers.

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as ‚us‘ and ‚them‘ – he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above… he knows that we all love our country… and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas… he’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

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

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

The indestructible is one: it is each individual human being and, at the same time, it is common to all, hence the incomparably indivisible union that exists between human beings.

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

As the father of eight children, I’m quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries – it’s the I that’s in the ever-changing body.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.