In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

I’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.

The thing that alarms me is that there are so many clergymen who say that the so-called ‚new morality‘ is all right. They say we’re living in a new generation; let’s be relevant, let’s change God’s law. Let’s say that adultery is all right under certain circumstances; fornication’s all right under certain circumstances. If it’s ‚meaningful.‘

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

More law, less justice.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

I’m not somebody that just wants to hold up a white flag and say, ‚Let’s all just get along.‘ I think people that do horrible things should be held accountable.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

My mind doesn’t work, my memories don’t work like a computer file where I can just retrieve them and, boy, there it is. My mind is selective in terms of memories. When I try to think back to college or high school, there are gaps. I try to fill them in. But I can’t tell you it’s always the truth.

He has committed the crime who profits by it.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

Truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen.

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.