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

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

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

A riot is the language of the unheard.

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

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

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.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

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.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

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.

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.

Those who ‚abjure‘ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married – we became an interracial couple.

Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it’s no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create – in one generation – closing the gap. That’s why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: ‚cause it’s life or death for real.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

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.

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.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

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

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

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.

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.

I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.

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.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

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 revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?

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

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

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

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

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

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.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

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.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

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

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

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

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.

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

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 vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

The first duty of a state is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated till it attains years of discretion.