We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

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.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.

It is true that classical libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty, diversity, and free association.

If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

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

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.

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.

I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

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

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

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.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

Foreignness is all around. Only in the heart of the heart of the country, namely the heart of the United States, can you avoid such a thing. In the center of an empire, you can think of your experience as universal. Outside the empire or on the fringes of the empire, you cannot.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

I have behind me not only the splendid traditions and the annals of more than a thousand years but the living strength and majesty of the Commonwealth and Empire; of societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God’s Will, united in spirit and in aim.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity.

With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

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

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

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.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

We believe that every single child has boundless promise, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money their parents have. We’ve got to remember that. We believe that each of these young people is a vital part of the great American story.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

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.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

The incomparable greatness of the religions of the East lies in their having been second to none in vibrating with the passion for unity. This note, which is essential to every form of mysticism, has even penetrated them so deeply that we find ourselves falling under a spell simply by uttering the names of their Gods.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

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

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

More law, less justice.

If we do not lift up women and families, everyone will fall short.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.