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.

You’ve got to vote, vote, vote, vote. That’s it; that’s the way we move forward. That’s how we make progress for ourselves and for our country.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

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.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

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.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it’s one that’s easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they’re so visible. They’re out in the open. When they’re visible, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

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.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

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

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

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.

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

I think it’s important to vote.

I speak to you only as an American who happens to be an American Negro and one who is proud of that heritage. We ask for nothing special. We ask only that we be permitted to compete on an even basis, and if we are not worthy, then the competition shall, per se, eliminate us.

Empire and liberty.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

In a democracy, allegations will never improve situations. So, I’m against allegations, but I always welcome criticism.

India is a democracy; it is in our DNA.

Women feel empowered when they can do the things that are supposed to be only for men, you know? It breaks boundaries, it’s liberating, and it’s empowering when you feel like, ‚Well, I can do that, too.‘

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets.

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

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

I don’t vote. I don’t do no voting.

The human being is in the most literal sense a political animal, not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society.

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

You’re not just voting for an individual, in my judgment, you’re voting for an agenda. You’re voting for a platform. You’re voting for a political philosophy.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.