I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

We walk together, we move together, we think together, we resolve together, and together we take this country forward.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

I was standing on a ladder outside the Homestead juvenile immigrant detention center outside Miami, looking over the fence, and I saw children lined up like prisoners. They had been separated from their families and put in this private detention facility. It was horrible.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

I think ‚Dirty Harry‘ was probably sensitive toward the victims of violent crime.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

We have observed that, in society and the world in which we live, selfishness has increased more than love for others, and that men of good will must work, each with his own strengths and expertise, to ensure that love for others increases until it is equal and possibly exceeds love for oneself.

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

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

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

It’s amazing if you just listen to people. They tell you all the time things that you can do for them, without even realizing what they’re doing. I’ve learned to take notice of those things and if it’s something that I feel God wants me to do, then I try to do that to add joy to their life.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‚sophisticated‘ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

There are thousands of Palestinians in prison virtually for no reason.

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

We just cannot worry about ourselves.

I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

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

Jesus never mistreated anyone just because they mistreated Him. He confronted them in a spirit of gentleness and then continued to love them.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

I’m opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

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?

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

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

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.