When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

There is a tendency for things to right themselves.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

I have now exactly the same weight I had when I was 18, 20.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.

With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst, and with continued unity of effort, we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States – that is, prosperity.

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

In my videos, I always want to be a powerful woman. That’s my mission.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

American imperialism is often traced to the takeover of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii in 1898.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

All of us are mentors. You’re mentors right here and now. And one of the things I’ve always done throughout my life, I have always found that person, that group of people that I was going to reach my hand out and help bring them along with me.

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry ‚Native passes‘ issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Nationalism has a way of oppressing others.

I just want people to be the best thems and live the happiest lives possible.

Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.

Here’s what I believe, I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in the history of the world but i think there was some bad apples over there.

I loved being Maleficent. I was quite sad to put my staff down and put my horns away because somehow, she just lives in a different world.

I got no quarrel with them Vietcong.

This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.

Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

I just use fashion as an excuse to talk about politics. Because I’m a fashion designer, it gives me a voice, which is really good.

I’m no natural beauty. If I’m gonna have any looks at all, I’m gonna have to create them.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Part of the core information that I’ve been purveying is that identity politics is a sick game. You don’t play racial, ethnic, and gender identity games. The Left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let’s say, and the Right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride. I think they’re equally dangerous.

Even in the United States, the enslavement of African descendants continued until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. That brutal form of slavery was abolished there hardly thirty years before it was abolished in Cuba.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

I hope that people around the world will be as inspired as I am to step up and to speak out on behalf of girls around the world who struggle to go to school.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

I groan daily under a body of sin and corruption. Oh for the time when I shall drop this flesh, and be free from sin!

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

Some slaves are scoured to their work by whips, others by their restlessness and ambition.