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.

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.

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

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.

Transformation happens only when you put your total energy into it.

He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?

Honor your father and mother even as you honor God for all three were partners in your creation.

My modus operandi has always been understatement and that just doesn't really work in pop.

I have very strongly this feeling that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary.

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

Zombies are the real lower-class citizens of the monster world and that's why l like them.

Superstition changes a man to a beast, fanaticism makes him a wild beast, and despotism a beast of burden.

I'm not envious of Leo [Messi]or Ney [Neymar]. Why would I be? If there is envy in the dressing room, you know it's only going to affect results.

I think Shakespeare had a lot to contribute with his understanding of the human condition.