I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.

People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship, and if that happened, then they wouldn’t be prey to the employers who say, ‚We want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.‘

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

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.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry ‚Native passes‘ issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

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.‘

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could look forward to a whole world in which no child will be left behind?

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.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.

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.

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

Toleration is good for all, or it is good for none.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

Eternal principles that govern happiness apply equally to all.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

The little man is still a man.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.

Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating. Especially among ourselves. It wasn’t white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

‚Whole Women’s Health‘ made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

God tells us not to judge one another, no matter what anyone’s sexual preferences are or if they’re black, brown or purple.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

We should work with the principle that a work that can be done at a lower level should never be escalated to a higher level.

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 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?

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

I love diversity.

Science is global. Einstein’s equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

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

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

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Income inequity has to be addressed.