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 one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

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?

All religions must be tolerated… for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline.

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

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.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it.

I dressed more like a pop star, I suppose, rather than the traditional blazer and tall trousers other players went for.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

I’ve met some Evertonians in the street, and they’ve been friendly. I’ve had taxi drivers who have been Everton fans. They’ve been really nice.

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

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.

I like to be myself, and I don’t pretend. For instance, I don’t dress up for occasions; I am what I am.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn’t an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There’s room for intuition.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

I can simply tell you that since I was a kid, I didn’t like to look like anyone else.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.

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.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

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.

The Oslo Accords in 1993 determined that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are a single territorial entity which cannot be divided. Immediately, the United States and Israel set about separating the two and making sure that they would not be united.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.

I do not doubt that we would become more useful if we praised God more, and others would join us, for they would see that God has blessed us.

Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order, and the right of peaceful protest.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

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

Many people say that this is not an easy issue, we cannot just say that this is how it is, it’s not black and white. But I say that this is black and white. Either we stop the emissions or we don’t. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival.

Great tragedy has come to us, and we are meeting it with the best that is in our country, with courage and concern for others because this is America. This is who we are.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

A lot of people have said I’d have probably done better in my career if I hadn’t looked so cheap and gaudy. But I dress to be comfortable for me, and you shouldn’t be blamed because you want to look pretty.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.