Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

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.

So people are talking about revolution. What a revolution it would be to have a woman president.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

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.

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

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.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

Real living is living for others.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

On wrongs swift vengeance waits.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

The walls, the bars, the guns and the guards can never encircle or hold down the idea of the people.

I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put – without delay, and with tenderness – back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

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.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.