In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

The future will be better tomorrow.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

‚You are no saint,‘ says the devil. Well, if I am not, I am a sinner, and Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Sink or swim, I go to Him; other hope, I have none.

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.

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

When my dad founded our church, he used either a globe or a map of the world behind him. It was symbolic of what Christ said: to go forth and preach hope to the world. We believe in the cross, but we just continued with the globe.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

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.‘

And every human being is precious.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

Facts, like people, want to be free – and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

It is a most delightful reflection that if I come to the throne of God in prayer, I may feel a thousand defects, but yet there is hope. I usually feel more dissatisfied with my prayers than with anything else I do.

True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

Justice is truth in action.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

I am the freest author in the world.

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.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

Homophobia is real in this country.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

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.‘

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

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.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‚Ich bin ein Berliner!‘

God is a great God! I want to encourage you to expect great things from Him.

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us thru that darkness to a safe and sane future.

There is no injustice in the grace of God. God is as just when He forgives a believer as when He casts a sinner into hell.

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

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.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

Fashion is an imposition, a reign on freedom.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

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

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.