One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

Man can never be a woman’s equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

What’s important for my daughter to know is that… if you are fortunate to have opportunity, it is your duty to make sure other people have those opportunities as well.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

I love diversity.

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?

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

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 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.

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

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.‘

Palestinians have no wealth or power.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.

The argument that resistance to the war should remain strictly nonviolent seems to me overwhelming.

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.

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

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

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.

There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.

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

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

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.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

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.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

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

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

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

The man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

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

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.

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

I’m not in favour of dividing Hindus and Sikhs. I’m not in favour of dividing Hindus and Christians. All the citizens, all the voters, are my countrymen.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

I realized quickly what Mandela and Tambo meant to ordinary Africans. It was a place where they could come and find a sympathetic ear and a competent ally, a place where they would not be either turned away or cheated, a place where they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

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.

Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.