James Cleverly Quotes

The world is slowly evolving into a place where the things that we have seen as being taboo are starting to open up a bit more.

I'm not a predictable black liberal.

Part of the concept behind the magazine was breaking barriers. And it wasn't just a sexual thing. It was racial and doing the things that were right. And in the process, that set 'Playboy' apart.

Men like me are impossible until the day when they become necessary.

It's really important, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, to always challenge the conventional wisdom, which is what I've tried to do in all my work.

There was a time when someone would get on a plane and request to move their seat just because the person sitting next to them was of a different ethnicity or religion or nationality. But I don't think my generation wants that. That's how it used to be.

I always think that the exceptional people are those who remain outsiders but still communicate on a grand scale. I think I want everyone to feel more free, and so I feel really claustrophobic on behalf of lots of people.

San Francisco is really fun and liberal, and it's my kind of politics. It's like being Jewish in front of Jewish people.

A show hosted by a black had never been accepted, so the first time that knob's turned on, people are judging against all they have ever been taught. I may have been the first black in the house.

There was the 'Cosby Show' in America in the 1980s, which was a doctor in a beautiful Brownstone middle-class house. We just haven't created a role like that in the U.K.; it's always gangs and crime. We need to be brave.

Poetry and art are key influences in changing how we look at taboos.

I'm trying to break a lot of prejudices with my every film.

I love the fact we do break taboos.

At least international media can see how I am trying to change the typical orthodox mindset of people who don't want to come out of their shells of false beliefs and old practices.

Men in makeup is becoming more widely accepted. But it's going to take so much more open-mindedness to have it be a common thing.

I am probably an outsider because I challenge conventional narratives about who should have a seat at the table.

We came from an era when women normally did not rock.

The progressive and liberal mindset believes that to every problem there is a Washington, D.C., solution.

Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...

I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.

By the late 70s conservatism was becoming more corporate on the one hand, more theocratic on the other. In reaction to the 60s, conservatism was more about order than freedom, more about conformity than singularity.

I think any film that asks its audience a degree of tolerance and acceptance of those less fortunate than themselves isn't a bad thing from whatever culture you're in or from whatever part of any political spectrum.

[Martin Luther King] King was a socialist and King was an activist who was really a radical by the end.

Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes.

When most people see the word "radical," they think that it must refer to something left wing. Some people also may think of it as referring to far right-wing marginal groups. But here we have a president of the United States [George W. Bush] at the center of power, sitting in the White House, who is a radical.