Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I'm not going to play a racial game. With me, you're going to meet a guy named Shelby Steele, and you will have to get to know me as an individual. The color of my skin won't tell you anything. I think there's more and more of that in America.

I am not the Beatles. I'm me. Paul isn't the Beatles...The Beatles are the Beatles. Separately, they are separate.

Black people, we are not this monolithic group, you know?

England is better only because I stand out there as 'unusual'.

I love Obama because he is proof all black people don't look alike. Nobody every told me, 'Good morning, Mr. President.' We don't all look alike.

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, 'We're black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we're all brought up differently.'

Me and Janet really are two different people.

The concept of “the white community” is a monolithic concept that I do not accept.

We’re always talking about blacks as a group and whites as individuals.

What is it to be white? It does mean something to be Norwegian. It means something to be Polish or German or Spanish. But 'white' is simply a catchall for 'light-skinned person.' It doesn't really mean anything.

I am instinctively wary of identity politics. Ultimately, no two black men are the same, any more than two white men are the same.

We're not monolithic. What is blackness? To me, how do you define that?

It's the details that make people distinct, that make them individuals.

I am more than a black guy. I am a person, I'm storyteller, I'm a son, I'm a friend, so I am all those things, so it is frustrating, to a degree, to be limited by other people's perceptions of me, but at the same time, it is true that I am a black guy, and, you know, it's like I'm rooted in but not bound by.

It doesn't feel great to be compared to Genelia or anyone. I don't want to be compared, and I would like to think I am different.

I want people to see what I can do. Not see what Steph can do or my dad can do and then assume that's what I do. I want them to actually watch me play and then decide who they think I am.

People think that being Korean is all one thing.

Every athlete, every person is individual.

No country can become a nation by producing a race of imitators.

A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

All I've ever tried to tell anyone is that I'm not a black man or a white man or anything else. All I've ever been was an American.

To please the many is to displease the wise.

This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.

To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.