All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

I want a president with a record of public service, someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase fame and fortune for ourselves: we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

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

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down .

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

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.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

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

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

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

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

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

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

You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.

Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

The little man is still a man.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

I think when you see an aircraft fire, these angry, black puffs of smoke, knowing that one of them could kill you that you – you – you understand the seriousness of the mission. And you understand your own mortality.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Life is wasted on the living.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

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.

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.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

Freedom is not enough.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

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.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of langour and suffering – an image of death.