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.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

I don’t even know how to speak up for myself, because I don’t really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.

I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

I don’t have a problem with Hulk Hogan. People say things and do things, and who am I to judge?

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

I am fearless.

I have a self-defense mind. I’ve had it all my life.

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.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

I would not like to be the only woman on the court.

What we face may look insurmountable. But I learned something from all those years of training and competing. I learned something from all those sets and reps when I didn’t think I could lift another ounce of weight. What I learned is that we are always stronger than we know.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

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.

We do not need the empire to give us anything.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

I’m just a little kid from Akron.

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

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

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

To lead people walk behind them.

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

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.

We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.

I thought I couldn’t make a difference because I was too small.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

Contraceptive protection is something every woman must have access to, to control her own destiny.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

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

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