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.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

I know black people love the idea that we finally have a beautiful, good-looking black president. But if he is doing awful things to us, we should wake up.

I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

It seems the only way to gain attention today is to organize a march and protest something.

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

We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country.

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.‘

I can’t read the newspaper without crying. I’m easily affected by horrible events, you see.

If you see oppression of the poor, and justice and righteousness trampled in a country, do not be astounded.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

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?

The white man is destroying the world.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

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

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

The most violent show on TV is the six o’clock news.

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.

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

I hope I’m wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

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

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

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

No one is pro-abortion.

I don’t follow politics much.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

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.

By curious accident of history and geography, the world’s major energy resources are located pretty much in Shiite regions. They’re a minority in the Middle East, but they happen to be where the oil is, right around the northern part of the Gulf.

For 18 years I have resisted talking about current events. I am not going to start now.

I don’t think Romney is wacky at all, but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things. Left on his own, Romney would never have said something like the Garden Of Eden was in Missouri, and will be again.

The last person I have ever criticized is an official. They have a tough job to do. Things are happening so quick.

When I was elected President nobody asked me to negotiate between Israel and Egypt. It was not even a question raised in my campaign. But I felt that one of the reasons that I was elected President was to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

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.‘

Iran is not an enemy of ISIS; they have a lot to gain from the turmoil that ISIS creates.

The West Bank is essentially imprisoned.

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

I was not an activist.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

Hate crime is not new in the United States.

I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief.

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.

I have to admit I’ve found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I’m pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me.

Because I know about the Holy Land, I’ve taught lessons about the Holy Land all my life, and – but you can’t bring peace to Israel without giving the Palestinian also peace. And Lebanon and Jordan and Syria as well.

It’s a very confusing era that we’re in.

As a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.