Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

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.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

A successful lawsuit is the one worn by a policeman.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

Where do the evils like corruption arise from? It comes from the never-ending greed. The fight for corruption-free ethical society will have to be fought against this greed and replace it with ‚what can I give‘ spirit.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

Trust should be the basis for all our moral training.

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.

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

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

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

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

A strong man doesn’t have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn’t match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

We are all alike, on the inside.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

I do not pilfer victory.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

Morality is contraband in war.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information – the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

To God everything is beautiful, good, and just; humans, however, think some things are unjust and others just.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.

Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way. It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict – which, of course, the U.S. dismissed with contempt.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

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.

The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.

I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

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.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

I understood that with the swipe of my pen as a prosecutor, I would have the decision in my pen to make a decision about someone’s life.