I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

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

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

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

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

For years, decades, the system has taught us to stay quiet. They’ve made us believe that those who take to the streets to speak up are crazy, criminals, troublemakers.

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.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Undocumented aliens unfortunately are not protected by the law, and they are tremendously subjected to exploitation. The result is that they would be willing to work for a wage that no person who is welcome in our shores would take.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

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

We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

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

Women should be obscene and not heard.

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

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

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

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.

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.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

The man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

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

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

Those who ‚abjure‘ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.

We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.

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

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

I’m pro Union.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

Democracy passes into despotism.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.