If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

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

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.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

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

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

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

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

I can’t help the way you was born if you was gay.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

The key is to vote because we need a vote to put the people in power that we want to represent us.

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

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

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

Nothing is more precious than independence and liberty.

All I’m for is the liberty of the individual.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

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

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

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?

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

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.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

I believe in the transformational power of liberty. I believe that the free Iraq is in this nation’s interests. I believe a free Afghanistan is in this nation’s interest.

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?

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

I think it’s important to vote.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

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.

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

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

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.