Bigotry is the sacred disease.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn’t white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?

I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

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

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

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

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.

Society is at odds with itself.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we’re in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we’ve got to do something about the unemployed.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

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.

I’ve never thought about any kind of prejudice about women in country music because I never felt like it affected me. I was fortunate enough to come about in a time when I didn’t feel that kind of energy at all, and it was always my theory that if you want to play in the same ballgame as the boys, you’ve got to work as hard as them.

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

Anti-Semitism is real in this country.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Bigotry is probably the thing I detest most.

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

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

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

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.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

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.

Homophobia is real in this country.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

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.

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

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

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

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

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.

The proper study of mankind is woman.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

We are looking for happiness and running after it in such a way that creates anger, fear and discrimination. So when you attend a retreat, you have a chance to look at the deep roots of this pollution of the collective energy that is unwholesome.

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

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.

Let’s be clear about this, and let’s be clear: we should not be creating incentives to house people in prison. We should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison.

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

Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

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

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.

I have spoken about inflation, unemployment, farmers‘ problems, security, etc. I keep talking about these issues. I seek answers from the Indian government.

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.

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don’t get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.

I ain’t never called nobody no redskin. I’ve never been mad, like, ‚Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.‘