I think the first duty of society is justice.

In today’s world, having money has allowed people who are extremely uncool to think that they’re cool and carry it like that. People who really are cool and people who really are artists and have ideas have to literally turn in their cool card to society just to make it past the age of 28.

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

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

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

I’m a singer, not a politician, and I think you don’t want the two to get confused. It’s not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

We did not choose to be the guardians of the gate, but there is no one else.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.

No good is ever done to society by the pictorial representation of its diseases.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

There is a moral obligation that those who have should give to those who don’t.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

If we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor.

My first big mission for UNICEF in Ethiopia was just to attract attention, before it was too late, to conditions which threatened the whole country. My role was to inform the world, to make sure that the people of Ethiopia were not forgotten.

In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

For revolutionary Cubans, to cooperate with other poor and exploited peoples has always been a political principle and a duty towards humanity.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

One of the first duties of a Scout is obedience to authority. He must obey his orders in the first place and put his own amusement or desires in the second.

It is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.

When trouble breaks out, our men and women in uniform, they don’t just sit around thinking about it or talking about it – they act. They put on that uniform. They leave their loved ones behind. They go out there. They give orders. They follow orders. They do whatever it takes to keep our country safe.

I really don’t like women who try to be men. All these politicians, I think they’re horrendous. We could have a brilliant future, but we have this terrible male vision of destroying everything. They’d better sort themselves out and become more womanly.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

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

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.