Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

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.

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.

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

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

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.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

I am such a political person.

We’ve never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

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.

After the first International Days of Protest in October, 1965, Senator Mansfield criticized the ‚sense of utter irresponsibility‘ shown by the demonstrators.

Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

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

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

I’m a lad of the ’60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

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.

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

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

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

When people protest and are upset with a movie, it becomes a big hit. They hated Passion of The Christ, it worked out pretty well for the box office. So let’s get that going.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

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.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

‚Whole Women’s Health‘ made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

The man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.

One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.