Alicia Keys

Everyone deserves an equal chance at success.

As I grow and I get older I’m realising more and more that there’s such a beautiful, sensual power that we have as women.

When you’re first figuring yourself out, you care so much about what people think of you.

I love learning about different religions, and discovering the different ways to worship, and to love the greatness and the higher being that surrounds us all. I definitely believe in a bigger presence, and I really respect all religions; at their core they all teach the same message – community and kindness and looking out for each other.

In the 1990s, with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, those really big female artists were very glamorous, it was all about the glamour at that time. And so there was a big switch, the desire to be more who you were, not so beholden to this whole standard of beauty. It was a liberation. You see Mary J Blige – she did the same, wearing the combat boots.

We all have our challenges, issues, things that we’re working through and insecurity is there because nobody is perfect no matter who you are. It’s that imperfection that makes you so dope.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

Americans Never Quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We Make History.

Kings are the slaves of history.

To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.

The Holocaust was a crime without parallel in history, and I am proud to launch an initiative to raise awareness of and to tackle anti-Semitism in all its forms. This is the start of an important journey and we all have a part to play.

He who does not understand history is doomed to repeat it.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity.

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces – in nature, in society, in man himself.

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.

Any event, once it has occurred, can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.