When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

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.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

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

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

Youth is wasted on the young.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

I’ve never considered musical equipment very sacred.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.

There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

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

At the major studios, you see people wanting to remake a TV series, wanting to make a sequel.

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

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

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 only film I’ve enjoyed starring a wrestler was Mickey Rourke in ‚The Wrestler.‘

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it – the grain, how it feels, the texture.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

She’s a total professional, a diva, a mega-star, not just in music but in the entertainment industry. You always learn from the greats, and J.Lo is one.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Eternal principles that govern happiness apply equally to all.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

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.

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

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

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

Freedom is relative.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.