Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Here at home, when Americans were standing in long lines to give blood after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we squandered an obvious opportunity to make service a noble cause again, and rekindle an American spirit of community.

Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart, don’t know how to laugh either.

In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute – a white skin.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

I look after people.

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

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

As human beings we have the most extraordinary capacity for evil. We can perpetrate some of the most horrendous atrocities.

I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.

I hate letting my teammates down. I know I’m not going to make every shot. Sometimes I try to make the right play, and if it results in a loss, I feel awful. I don’t feel awful because I have to answer questions about it. I feel awful in that locker room because I could have done something more to help my teammates win.

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

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

Something must be done to save humanity! A better world is possible!

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he’s an American child.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

Out of 6 billion humans, the troublemakers are just a handful.

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

I’m all about peace. I’m all about unity. I’m all about love.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices.

Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual work of creation, the successive sketches for which still surround us on every side.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

Mankind, the spirit of the earth, the synthesis of individuals and peoples, the paradoxical conciliation of the element with the whole, and of unity with multitude – all these are called Utopian, and yet they are biologically necessary.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

I think when the president of the United States calls for military action, he should do it for a united people, especially when the methods have been so cruel, so explicitly directed at Americans.

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‚them‘ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‚us.‘

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

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

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.