June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn’t women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers?

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

When I talk to kids, I’m really listening. When I do that, we have a little bit of a bigger connection than me being Kendrick Lamar and you being a student. It’s almost like we’re friends. Because a friend listens.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

I don’t have many friends; I’m very much a loner. As a child I was very isolated, and I’ve never been really close to anyone.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: ‚What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.‘

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court he ceases to be your friend.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

And so I have studied, I have to tell you, revolutions and uprisings for a long time. They are all slightly different, but what they all look for is some kind of a mechanism to go from an authoritarian system to an open, democratic system.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

I think women are really good at making friends and not good at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily making friends. That’s a gross generalization, but I think it holds in many ways.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.

A youth, when at home, should be filial and, abroad, respectful to his elders. He should be earnest and truthful. He should overflow in love to all and cultivate the friendship of the good. When he has time and opportunity, after the performance of these things, he should employ them in polite studies.

I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.

It is fun to be in the same decade with you.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

But I’ve got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album’s worth of work as his legacy. That’s all that life allowed him.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

Let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under a McCain administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel’s under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change.

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

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.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

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

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Do good to your friends to keep them, to your enemies to win them.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.

If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

Acquaintances we meet, enjoy, and can easily leave behind; but friendship grows deep roots.

Prime Minister Netanyahu has, as Minister Livni knows, has been my friend for over 30 years. We drive each other crazy. But he has truly been a personal friend for well over 30 years. He acknowledged this.