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.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

History should be written as philosophy.

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.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

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

Do you know something? The minute that blood sacrifice was accepted, Jesus was the first human being that was ever born again. Now that was real – it happened when he was in Hell.

Normally, when someone we love is turning away from a struggle, we self-protect by also turning away. That’s definitely my first response. I think change is more likely to happen if both partners have common language and a shared lens to see problems.

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 world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

The U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

We are all different. There is no such thing as a standard or run-of-the-mill human being, but we share the same human spirit.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.

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

I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

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

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

Of those beings who live in ignorance, shut up and confined, as it were, in an egg, I have first broken the eggshell of ignorance and alone in the universe obtained the most exalted, universal Buddhahood.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

Life is warfare.

When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

History, a distillation of rumour.

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives every man his due.

Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman’s behind.

Empire and liberty.

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 can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

The roaring thunder of the law and the fear of the terror of judgment are both used to bring us to Christ, but the final victory culminating in our salvation is won through God’s loving-kindness.

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework.

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.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.