One of the things that I have admired about India is the spiritualism of the people.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

We boil at different degrees.

The intensity of the football and how the people live football in Liverpool – it is not a usual.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

My roots are in Paris, and I will not pull them up.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

There is not enough funding for basic sciences in India. We have to invest in a big way, and I am pushing that idea.

I found that part of it towards San Salvador extending from north to south five leagues, and the other side which we coasted along, ran from east to west more than ten leagues.

Man, I really like Vegas.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

I never go anywhere. I do sketches and make phone calls, and people visit. It’s more fun to come to Paris.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists.

Touring is very routine. You get to the city, you go to the hotel, you got to be at the hotel by a certain time – it’s very routine. I’m not a very structured person, so when I get some structure, it’s cool; it’s good for me.

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

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

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

I just like to have words that describe things correctly. Now to me, ‚black feminist‘ does not do that. I need a word that is organic, that really comes out of the culture, that really expresses the spirit that we see in black women. And it’s just… womanish.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.

I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.

Obscenity comes from grime.

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

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.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn’t that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I’d already been translating French poetry, I’d been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

I’ll bring my grits when I travel, because I get so hungry on the road.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

There are plenty of dead scientists I admire, but I can’t think of any living ones. This is probably because it is only in retrospect that one can see who made the important contributions.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

I’m going to try to unite all Americans.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.

Our love, our gratitude, our admiration for our men and women in uniform, our veterans and their families – all of that is bigger than any one party or any one election.

Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything. It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

I mean, Hawaii is beautiful, but the world is full of beautiful places.

I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I’m a philistine. I like the good life too much; I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy. Marilyn Monroe, because she was a curvy woman. I’m drawn to things that have the same kind of silhouettes as what she wore because our bodies are similar.

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

I feel like I have lived all over the world since I get to go everywhere to film.

India has to be transformed into a developed nation, a prosperous nation and a healthy nation, with a value system.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

I was in Europe and it was at this stage that I fell in love with Americans in uniform. And I continue to have that love affair.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

We don’t want two-tier people in America. Those who are legal but not citizens, and citizens.