“America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don’t misuse a household pet.”

Home was a place to be only when all other places were closed.

There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.

I believe young voters will either vote for Obama or not vote at all. So the problem is not Obama the problem is the system. If you think about how mess up this country is, most folk really don’t have choices.

I tell people, ‘If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.’

Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don’t have the ability to be lovable.

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.

In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don’t know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not enough, but it helps.

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago, it’s a sport.

Everything we do we should look at in terms of millions of people who can’t afford it.

Once I realized the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

You hear entertainers all the time, saying, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for this, I’d do it for free.’ When’s the last time you ever heard a business person say, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I’d do it for free?’

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.

I tell people, ‘If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.’

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom, not separated from it.

I smell a rat.

And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place – even the butterfly.

The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.

Sometimes I [longed to be a chimp] I just wanted to know. what it felt like in the evening to be making a nest and what it felt like to be a female when a big male comes thundering in.

You can’t put feathers on a dog and call it a chicken!

But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees.