We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation – not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Who does not desire such a victory by which we shall join places in our Kingdom, so far divided by nature, and for which we shall set up trophies in another conquered world?

I can find in my undergraduate classes, bright students who do not know that the stars rise and set at night, or even that the Sun is a star.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

I tend to stay up late, not because I’m partying but because it’s the only time of the day when I’m alone and don’t have to be performing.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

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.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

At one time, you could sit on the Rue de la Paix in Paris or at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv or in Medina and you could see a person come in, black, white, it didn’t matter. You said, ‚That’s an American‘ because there’s a readiness to smile and to talk to people.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

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.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

One of the things that I have admired about India is the spiritualism of the people.

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.

Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

Everyone got kind of crazy with me mentioning I was in love with a woman.

Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

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

A man is a method, a progressive arrangement; a selecting principle, gathering his like to him; wherever he goes.

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

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

I’m not interested in more political or cultural combat.

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.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.

Racial prejudice, anti-Semitism, or hatred of anyone with different beliefs has no place in the human mind or heart.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

The Christian religion, though scattered and abroad will in the end gather itself together at the foot of the cross.

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God’s children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

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

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

We can succeed only by concert. It is not, ‚Can any of us imagine better,‘ but, ‚Can we all do better?‘

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

The knowledge that we have brother scouts working in the same uniform, to the same ends, in the same way, in all corners of the Empire, cannot but make scouts proud of their brotherhood, and cannot fail to bring them into closer sympathy.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

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