I was not an activist.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

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

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.

There are thousands of boys being wasted daily to our country through being left to become characterless, and, therefore, useless wasters, a misery to themselves and an eyesore and a danger to the nation. They could be saved if only the right surroundings or environment were given to them at the receptive time of their lives.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

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

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, ‚Oh, you know, I can use this word because I’m black.‘

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

Hate crime is not new in the United States.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

I was a proponent of the ERA.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

I am such a political person.

I’m a lad of the ’60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

I have spoken about inflation, unemployment, farmers‘ problems, security, etc. I keep talking about these issues. I seek answers from the Indian government.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

I think that’s something that all mothers have to deal with, especially single mothers. We work, and we have to leave the kids behind. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we, not only as women but as families, we have to advocate for early childhood education for all of our children.

Poverty is the mother of crime.

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.

Let’s be clear about this, and let’s be clear: we should not be creating incentives to house people in prison. We should be creating incentives instead to shut the revolving door into prison.

No one is pro-abortion.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

The proper study of mankind is woman.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

The idea that there is one kind of African is, of course, ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads. Of course they are right to press for that issue, but so are we right, I believe, to argue, for example, that millions of children could and should be vaccinated.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

Leaders in all spheres who are living with HIV should be encouraged, not coerced, to lead by example and disclose their HIV status.

The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either.

I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

Sexism is everywhere, bro. I don’t know if it’s ever not somewhere.

The ‚Third World‘ is a term I don’t like very much because we’re all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering.

It’s a disgrace that we have millions of people who are uninsured.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

I was so upset with what was going on in the world. I just couldn’t stand the idea of being people tortured and that we even had such a thing as war. I hated the older generation, who had not done anything about it. Punk was a call-to-arms for me.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

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

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

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.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

The ‚anti-globalisation movement‘ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.