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

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

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.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

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.

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

I couldn’t take pictures of green rolling hills.

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.

Pakistan is not a unified country.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

All art is but imitation of nature.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

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.

Art was, seriously, the only thing I’d ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it’s taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, ‚Let’s get out the camera and get that shot.‘ You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

I love a natural look in pictures.

In all my days of schooling, from preschool all the way up to 12th grade, there was not one white person in my class. Literally zero.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

Even in this globalised world, London is still the standard for our times. The city has embraced the world’s diversity and represents the finest in human achievements.

I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it’s possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

My mother always used to say, ‚Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go to church or go to worship Allah, but surely if those people are worshipping a God, it must be the same God‘ – that’s what she always said. The same God with different names.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

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 love making new friends and I respect people for a lot of different reasons.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

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

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

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.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It’s got a bit busier since the ’60s, but the more the merrier!

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

My focus is my art, and that’s what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I’ve turned down many things that I just didn’t believe in.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

All an agent is going to do is buy things for a player, damage his eligibility, and make the player dependent on them.

Women are the engine driving the growth in California’s economy. Women make California’s economy unique.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

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.