But I'm here to say that when we do speak out, we're going to do so because the United States of America does believe, and will always stand for, a certain set of universal values.

You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Keep exploring. Keep dreaming. Keep asking why. Don’t settle for what you already know. Never stop believing in the power of your ideas, your imagination, your hard work to change the world.

When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk.

Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.

Change is never easy, but always possible.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that your efforts don’t matter or that your voice doesn’t count. Don’t ever believe that you can’t make a difference. You have.

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up.

Learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. And it's up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

Maybe in the workplace I have more courage than other areas in my life.

Brothers are a blessing for one thing. There is no possibility of any young lady getting unreasonably conceited if she be endowed with them.

Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember.

New York, hands down. I don't want to be there in the winter, but even then it's an amazing place.

I always get a little uppity when I hear the phrase 'TV actor.' It's like saying you're a magazine reporter. I was in the theater for ten years before I ever had a TV audition.

Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it.

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music.

God is the electricity and we are the lamps.

Wealth begins . . . in giving on all sides by tools and auxiliaries the greatest possible extension to our powers; as if it added feet and hands and eyes and blood. . . .

You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.