I care about helping to address these problems of social cohesion and understanding what economic problems people think exist.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

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

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

Many churches today have special programs for people who are grieving, and these can be very helpful.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

When I ask OGs why there’s so much division in the streets, nobody never really knows. But you know one thing that everybody always mention? A woman.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

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

The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists.

Well, yeah, people are working in our country. You know what? They’re working two and three jobs, and in our America, people should not have to work more than one job to be able to put food on the table and have a roof over their head.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

There are thousands of boys being wasted daily to our country through being left to become characterless, and, therefore, useless wasters, a misery to themselves and an eyesore and a danger to the nation. They could be saved if only the right surroundings or environment were given to them at the receptive time of their lives.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba.

When I read about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

Bigotry is the sacred disease.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. The teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

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.

Giving a poor person money keeps them poor.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

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.

The North East has always been the hub to produce few of the best talents in the country and it is great for the people from the hills to have their own local club to cheer for considering the kind of passion they have for the game.

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

The white man is destroying the world.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

I am no supporter of factory labor for children, but I have never joined with those who clamored against proper work of children on farms outside their school hours.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

Sexism is real in this country.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

Homophobia is real in this country.

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

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

Let’s be clear about this, and let’s be clear: we should not be creating incentives to house people in prison. We should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Whenever our neighbour’s house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we’re in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we’ve got to do something about the unemployed.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.