For the introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state; since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

Most of the problems a President has to face have their roots in the past.

Yup, the whole birther movement was racist.

The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.

Mariah and Whitney Houston were my goddesses growing up.

Read my lips: no new taxes.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

Arafat’s departure has created an awesome opportunity.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

I feel Anglo-American.

You and I are stuck with the necessity of taking the worst of two evils or none at all. So-I’m taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.

The great moments of rock ‚n‘ roll were never off in some corner of the music world, in a self-constructed ghetto.

I think it’s really cool when artists have song titles or album names that are a really conversational sentence.

I wish I could make music about politics. I feel like it’s such an art and a talent that I admire tremendously, but when I step into the studio, I step out of the real world, and it’s therapeutic.

If you want small changes in your life, work on your attitude. But if you want big and primary changes, work on your paradigm.

Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.

I’m not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

‚Fahrenheit 451‘ postulates a lot of things I didn’t want to have happen.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

I wrote ‚Channel Orange‘ in two weeks. The end product wasn’t always that gritty, real-life depiction of the real struggle that happened.

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‚least advanced‘ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

No, I can’t do rap music!

If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

Writing for other artists helped me figure out that magic you have to capture to make everyone connect with a song.

To innovate is not to reform.

When I’m writing, I’m thinking about how the songs are going to play live. Fifty bars of rap don’t translate onstage. No matter how potent the music, you lose the crowd. They want a hook; they want to sing your stuff back to you.

Yeah, it’s pretty hard not to be completely cynical these days.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

What’s dangerous is not to evolve.

The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

I wouldn’t call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I’ll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I’m listening to music and think, ‚Oh, there’s not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.‘

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

Metal, I love metal sounds. If I have a stick with me, I just drag it across a fence. And all fences make different sounds, just like people when they laugh.

Get off your horse and drink your milk.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.