“The real problem in Mississippi is almost a complete moral breakdown. ...” — James Meredith Quote

“The real problem in Mississippi is almost a complete moral breakdown. In order to move Mississippi from the bottom to the top, all we have to do is just get people to do a little more what they know, to practice a little more of what they preach.”

“I had developed a specifically calculated plan to break the system of white supremacy. My theory was that since Mississippi was the place, this was the ultimate: Mississippi was the place you had to break it.”

“Nothing is a bigger waste of time than regretting the past and worrying about the future.”

“My momma was slick as greased lightning. She knew how to get anybody and everybody to do whatever she wanted 'em to do.”

“Nothing has been more detrimental to me than to be considered a symbol, because I never stood for any of that... The civil rights movement thought they would do me harm over the years by disassociating themselves from me. Well, nothing in the world was more to my advantage. I was never one of them... I had my own divine mission.”

“I feel, first of all, very privileged that these people think enough of me that they made me commissioner. And it's almost like, as Yogi Berra said, 'deja vu all over again.'”

“I started ballet in my early 20s. I studied for about ten years. Ballet is probably the one of the hardest things I've done, almost like MMA. People don't give it a lot of credit and think it's easy, but it's very difficult. For an athlete, you use muscles you really don't use, and ballet is something I really respect.”

“I was in the orphanage in New Orleans until I was almost a year old. I don't think I ever got held by my mama, so that was completely and utterly traumatic. I think it was trauma from the first breath, and I think I've spent my whole life trying to heal from that trauma. So it shaped my brain.”

“I remain extraordinarily proud of the Vaughan Williams symphonies I recorded with the LSO, and in the 1980s and '90s, I made an almost complete cycle of orchestral works by Richard Strauss with the Vienna Philharmonic.”

“I think having a great idea is vastly overrated. I know it sounds kind of crazy and counterintuitive. I don't think it matters what the idea is, almost. You need great execution.”