One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Science is global. Einstein’s equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

I’ve said very clearly, including in a State of the Union address, that I’m against ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and that we’re going to end this policy.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

I think that there’s no doubt that as I see friends, families, children of gay couples who are thriving, you know, that has an impact on how I think about these issues.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Freedom is not enough.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married – we became an interracial couple.

I realized quickly what Mandela and Tambo meant to ordinary Africans. It was a place where they could come and find a sympathetic ear and a competent ally, a place where they would not be either turned away or cheated, a place where they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color.

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.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

A right delayed is a right denied.

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who’s spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off – we do not have to stand for this.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

A strong man doesn’t have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn’t match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

People often speak of God being even-handed. God is not even-handed. God is biased, in favor of the weak, of the despised.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

I love diversity.