I'm sure the government of Qatar is not coming in to grow food for the people of Kenya; it's coming to grow food to sell. If it can also sell to the people of Kenya, well, then good. I think that the moves can be helpful, but I think that the history that Africa knows, as I say in my book, has been a history of exploitation.

We think that diamonds are very important, gold is very important, all these minerals are very important. We call them precious minerals, but they are all forms of the soil. But that part of this mineral that is on top, like it is the skin of the earth, that is the most precious of the commons.

When you think of all the conflicts we have - whether those conflicts are local, whether they are regional or global - these conflicts are often over the management, the distribution of resources. If these resources are very valuable, if these resources are scarce, if these resources are degraded, there is going to be competition.

I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.

We tend to put the environment last because we think the first thing we have to do is eliminate poverty. But you can't reduce poverty in a vacuum. You are doing it in an environment.

I mean, if you think about doing things to people like that, if you think about it too much, it gets all up in you and you can't control it after a while. Then they really got you.

Each time I think there is no place lower to go, I find that there is at least one place that will mess you up worse than you were.

Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.

How strange to think that you cannot pass along the discovery.

I'm at like 325 pairs right now, give or take. But I've given away about 200 pairs of sneakers. I'm not as big of a collector as I used to be, because I think the game just got weird. Everybody likes to collect now, so it's kind of corny. But I got the essentials.

I never understood the idea that I was a 'backpack rapper.' I think that's a lazy way that people started thinking. They like saying that because I got dreads. I look like I belong a certain place, so it's easy to put everything in a box.

Sometimes I'm happy - you can tell via Twitter. Sometimes I'm pissed off - you can tell via Twitter. I just think, at the end of the day, I don't want them to see me as a celebrity; I just want them to see me and say, 'He's like a regular person at his job right now who's mad.'

In terms of 'Seinfeld', I think there's lot of reality in a show that's supposed to be about nothing.

There are certain things that can be asked that get me excited. It's never a thing where I think I'm too good, I'm just the type of person who likes to be enlightened. I don't like to go through the motions.

I hope everybody thinks they've got the best album. I wouldn't have put mine out if I didn't think it was the best.

I feel like I'm one of the more creative artists in the game. I think I'm going to be here for a while.

For myself, I think that those who cultivate wisdom and believe themselves able to instruct their fellow-citizens as to their interests are least likely to become partisans of violence. They are too well aware that to violence attach enmities and dangers, whereas results as good may be obtained by persuasion safely and amicably.

Cut my pie into four pieces, I don’t think I could eat eight.

One could certainly think of a man not in terms of a body but as a single vital current. And this would allow one to grasp the concept of existence as dynamic and on-going, rather than as static.

…In the very simplicity of her desire to punish herself appeared egoism in its purest form. Never before had this woman who seemed to think only of herself experienced an egoism so immaculate.

Everybody's the same. People are all the same. But it’s the prerogative of youth to think it’s not so.

It is a common failing of childhood to think that if one makes a hero out of a demon the demon will be satisfied.

Anything can become excusable when seen from the standpoint of the result

Don't you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.