I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

My aim is to make the poor look rich and the rich look poor.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

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.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

Women are the engine driving the growth in California’s economy. Women make California’s economy unique.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

A covenant made with God should be regarded not as restrictive but as protective.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

I am such a political person.

Our faith is released as we say, pray and do the Word.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire – this time under the Shia label.

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

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Kind of a grin with a body behind it.

I will never retire from politics, the revolution, or the ideas I have.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me – so am I.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

It is well known that the Soviet Union closely regulates all organizations and movements, including religion.

I told y’all I didn’t vote, right? But if I would’ve voted, I would’ve voted for Trump.

All men are equal before fish.

If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves that you are in the right?

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

Everybody should have a fair deal; everybody should have the chance to life in this world. If we were evolved as human beings, we would hopefully be able to alleviate suffering in the world.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly.

I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

I am a Catholic.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

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.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

I just want to lobby for God.

Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

When you work as a humanitarian, you are conscious that politics have to be considered. Because if you really want to make an extreme change, then you have a responsibility.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

Politics is applesauce.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?