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

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

Life is wasted on the living.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Fear is the mother of morality.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

And every human being is precious.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Homophobia is real in this country.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

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.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

The fact is that people are good, Give people affection and security, and they will give affection and be secure in their feelings and their behavior.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

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

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Nature is not human hearted.

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.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Everybody, to some extent, manipulates. Even children learn to cry when they want something. There are all kinds of subtle things we do to get others to follow our lead, not bother us, and so on.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

High-quality early-childhood programs and health coverage have expanded, and the number of mentoring relationships for at-risk youth has risen dramatically. That progress is encouraging, but it’s not evenly distributed.

Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

The black press, some liberal sportswriters, and even a few politicians were banging away at those Jim Crow barriers in baseball. I never expected the walls to come tumbling down in my lifetime.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

We all gonna die eventually from something or other, but don’t be a wimp. Put up a good fight.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

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.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

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.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

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

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

I love the women’s movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population.