You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.

You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out.

If there's an intellectual highway, there's also an intellectual subway.

Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music.

As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.

Our society has gotten to the point where we might soon become less and less shocked by any kind of violence.

When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present.

All of us are made up of the stories that we listen to, the ones we disagree with and the ones that we agree with.

When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm.

The perception of what we as professors provide has changed. Constant and demanding e-mails are just another manifestation of what our society has become.

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation.

Asian colleges would do well to use a broad range of criteria in selecting students and move beyond the unproductive "examination hell. "

The true cure for self-righteousness is self-knowledge.

You words affect generations after you. Speak blessings and favor over them.

Opportunities present themselves every day - to everyone. You just have to be alert and ready to act.

Willpower is the shortest shortcut to success.

People see poverty all around them in India, but they are desensitized or immune to it. I came to the conclusion that poverty is driven by lack of education.

But since everything and anything are always possible, the miraculous is always nearby, and wonders shall never, ever cease.

Bullies are always cowards.