And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

Conversion is a change of masters. Will we not do as much for our new master, the Lord Jesus, as we did once for our old tyrant lusts?

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it’s American or British interests involved.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

Nothing endures but change.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression – thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

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

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

Revolutions go not backward.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn’t know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn’t even smell like smoke.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their ‚democratic‘ right to vote.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

Before I became a chief minister, I never thought that one day I’d be the chief minister.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

This country is being managed to death, being public related to death.

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

I am worrying about my country. I feel I have a responsibility as a novelist to do something.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.

In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

To rule a country of a thousand chariots, there must be reverent attention to business, and sincerity; economy in expenditure, and love for men; and the employment of the people at the proper seasons.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

Nothing is being done to stop the climate and ecological emergency from happening and to secure the future wellbeing for future generations.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

You cannot make a sinner into a saint by killing him. He who does not live as a saint here will never live as a saint hereafter.