I care about helping to address these problems of social cohesion and understanding what economic problems people think exist.

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

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

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.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

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.

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.

Well, yeah, people are working in our country. You know what? They’re working two and three jobs, and in our America, people should not have to work more than one job to be able to put food on the table and have a roof over their head.

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.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

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.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

Many churches today have special programs for people who are grieving, and these can be very helpful.

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

Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.

Homophobia is real in this country.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.

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

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. The teaching of the church is clear, and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you’re dealt?

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

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

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

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.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

Bigotry is the sacred disease.

I am no supporter of factory labor for children, but I have never joined with those who clamored against proper work of children on farms outside their school hours.

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

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

Racism is real in this country.

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

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.

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.

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

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.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

I was not an activist.

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.

I’ve been actually really very pleased to see how much awareness was raised around bullying, and how deeply it affects everyone. You know, you don’t have to be the loser kid in high school to be bullied. Bullying and being picked on comes in so many different forms.

It’s a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

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.

Anti-Semitism is real in this country.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they’re so visible. They’re out in the open. When they’re visible, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

The ‚peace movement‘ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.