Alicia Keys

The amount of people in this world who are here to do something great far outweighs the rest.

What if… everything you are going through is preparing you for what you asked for?

I’ve come into loving and understanding the feminine side of me. How powerful a woman and her femininity is… how strong, how graceful, how gorgeous, how beautiful. I love getting to know the many sides of myself. I embrace them all.

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.

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.

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.

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

I do have a relationship [with Putin] and I can tell you he’s very interested in what we’re doing here today

There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of an individual person and the interests of the collective.

We have a tax-raising power in Scotland but not in English regions. I want genuine regional taxation powers [in England].

The Creel [propaganda] Commission…succeeded, within six months, in turning a pacifist [U.S.] population into a hysterical, war-mongering population which wanted to destroy everything German, tear the Germans limb from limb, go to war and save the world.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent, the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

Obviously these [white-guard] emigres enjoy the right of asylum existing also in the U.S. So far as we are concerned we would never tolerate a single terrorist in our territory regardless against whom he would contemplate his crimes. Apparently the right of asylum receives broader interpretation in the U.S.A. than in our country.

…when you look at a television ad, it is not trying to create an informed consumer who’s going to make a rational choice. The purpose is to delude and deceive by imagery — it’s transparent — meaning to ensure that uninformed consumers will make irrational choices.

It was sort of important for us not to deal with a specific policy change, or a specific sort of approach, but to deal with cultural change.

We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The Jews are not a nation!

Education is really aimed at helping students get to the point where they can learn on their own because that is what you’re going to do during your life, not just absorb materials given to you by the outside, and repeat it.

Russia is a part of European culture. Therefore, it is with difficulty that I imagine NATO as an enemy.

Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.

The media may feel obligated to carry extremely dubious stories and mute criticism in order not to offend their sources and disturb a close relationship. It is very difficult to call authorities on whom one depends for daily news liars, even if they tell whoppers.