Alicia Keys

Everything I do stems from something personal, not just because it will look good on paper or be a tax write-off.

I want my sons to grow up in a world where they’d never think boys are better than girls or that black is better than white.

It’s my nature to downplay.

You’ve got to have a good spirit on the inside. That’s what’s really going to make you look like you’re ready to rock the world.

I always feel excited when I can do something that’s about what I believe in.

Have you watched Snow White lately? I get real funky about the classics; I don’t like (my sons) watching it. It’s totally sexist, misogynistic – she’s cleaning for seven dwarfs. There’s nothing wrong with a woman who chooses to stay at home with her family, it’s a hard-ass job, but it’s the way it’s spoken about.

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.

It isn’t safe to sit in judgment upon another person’s illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, that will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

A man is related to all nature.

Slavery it is that makes slavery; freedom, freedom. The slavery of women happened when the men were slaves of kings.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Recognize the ego for what it is: a collective dysfunction, the insanity of the human mind.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.