Bigotry is probably the thing I detest most.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

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.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews – everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry ‚Native passes‘ issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

The white man is destroying the world.

In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.

Sexism is real in this country.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Nothing induces me to read a novel except when I have to make money by writing about it. I detest them.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.

Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.

All religions and all communities have the same rights, and it is my responsibility to ensure their complete and total protection. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

We must make it clear that a platform of ‚I hate gay men and women‘ is not a way to become president of the United States.

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

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

So far as the government is concerned, there is only one holy book, which is the constitution of India. My government will not tolerate or accept any discrimination based on caste, creed and religion.

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.