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.

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.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it’s again not people who are intrinsically evil.

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.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

I’m a people pleaser. I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

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

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

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

If you would judge, understand.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

The worker of the world has nothing to lose, but their chains, workers of the world unite.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

Mandela’s heroism is the heroism of a man who suffered so badly for what he thought of as freedom. And yet when he had the upper hand he has this incredible self-control and these incredible leadership qualities.

You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

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

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

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.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

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

Whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, or independents – it does not matter. We all understand that an attack on any one of us is an attack on all of us.

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.

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.