There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.

All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.

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.

What I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all – the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.

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.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

Every time I see high-trust cultures, I see a lessening of adversarialism.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

We must make it clear that a platform of ‚I hate gay men and women‘ is not a way to become president of the United States.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

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.

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.

There are definitely designers that I love, people I love to work with. And who they are as people matters. Are they good people? Do they treat their staff well? Do they treat my staff well? Are they young? Can I give them a boost? But when all of that is equal… is it cute?

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

An index is a great leveller.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they’re so visible. They’re out in the open. When they’re visible, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

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

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

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

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

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.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of his race.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

Life isn’t fair, but God is.

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

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

If you don’t let people flourish in their jobs, why are they going to stay?

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

The place of justice is a hallowed place.

In this country, it doesn’t make any difference where you were born. It doesn’t make any difference who your parents were. It doesn’t make any difference if, like me, you couldn’t even speak English until you were in your twenties.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

I love diversity.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

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 country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

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

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.