Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.

My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.

Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.

My future depends mostly upon myself.

Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

The intolerance of the few, or the risk of it, carries the day against the wider humanity of the many.

Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile.

Filmmaking has the power to fortify the feeble, unify the divided, raise the abandoned and inspire the ignorant.

Surrendering to the best of my abilities when the price of life has outweighed its benefit may be a compassionate choice for me and those around me.

I think the main thing about comedy and humor is that it's impossible and always was impossible to define.

All games are meaningless if you do not know the rules.

Twilight' has a supernatural reference to it with werewolves and vampires. 'Harry Potter' has magic. 'The Hunger Games' is about real people put into extreme situations and circumstances.

Movies like 'The Interview' and 'Team America: World Police' don't often show the realities of life in North Korea and the human rights violations perpetrated by the government there.

To wonder about life is not something we learn; it is something we forget.

I love my mother, not as a prisoner of atherosclerosis, but as a person; and I must love her enough to accept her as she is, now, for as long as this dwindling may take.

I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin... If wed had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good.