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

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

As a kid, I got three meals a day. Oatmeal, miss-a-meal and no meal.

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

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

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

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.

Don’t be a writer; it’s a terrible way to live your life. There’s nothing to be gained from it but poverty and obscurity and solitude. So if you have a taste for all those things, which means that you really are burning to do it, then go ahead and do it. But don’t expect anything from anybody.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists.

Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

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.

Religious persecutors are not believers, they are rascals.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn’t trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years, we had to grow and raise all of our food, even our animals. And I remember in my early life, we didn’t even have electricity. So it was very, very hard times then.

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

It is pretty ironic that the so-called ‚least advanced‘ people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction.

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

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

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

I am such a political person.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

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

If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been more than patient in seeking our rights as American citizens.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

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.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

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.

If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions.

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

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.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

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

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

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

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

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

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

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

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.