Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.

I’ve never seen America as an imperialist or colonialist or meddling country.

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.

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 have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

I think I’m one of the most patriotic people that I’ve ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way – not by donations; I work at it.

I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the injection of working at the Carter Center, and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on environment, and things of that kind.

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

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself who has declared war against Almighty God.

It’s empowering to know I am doing something, I am taking a stand, I am disrupting.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

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

Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

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

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‚Let us pray.‘ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

The best thing about my protest has been to see how more and more people have been coming and getting involved.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed.

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 submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

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

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

The term ‚the American Left‘ is as near to being meaningless or nonsensical as any term could really be in politics. It isn’t really a force in politics anymore. And it would do well to ask itself why that is.

I would remind you the lesser of two socialists is still a socialist.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

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 new breed of Republicans has taken over the GOP. It is a new breed which is seeking to sell to Americans a doctrine which is as old as mankind – the doctrine of racial division, the doctrine of racial prejudice, the doctrine of white supremacy.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

In the last several years, I have been troubled by the right shift of the Republican party too far to the right.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

At the outset, I want to say that the suggestion that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners or communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did because of my experience in South Africa and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any outsider might have said.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

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.

I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.