Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men.

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

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

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

This above all, to refuse to be a victim.

In the duel of sex woman fights from a dreadnought and man from an open raft.

I’m opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.

There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don’t need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal, picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn’t have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too.

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

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!

Responsibility is the price of freedom.

In my videos, I always want to be a powerful woman. That’s my mission.

Be above it! Make the world serve your purpose, but do not serve it.

I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.

The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

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

Consciously or unconsciously most of us adhere to what is expected of our role because we realize our social success depends on this. Some may refuse to play this game, but in the end they are marginalized and forced to play the outsider role, with limited options and decreasing freedom as they get older.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

Hiding places there are innumerable, escape is only one, but possibilities of escape, again, are as many as hiding places.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

In some respects, South African apartheid was more vicious than Israeli practices, and in some respects the opposite is true.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

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

If you see everything from the point of view of women being victims in some way, you don’t see the wood for the trees. It is better to be a person than a woman.

I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.

What did I owe the rest of the world? Nothing.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.

Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.

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.

The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin‘ on, I then got the money, and gone.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.

To lead people walk behind them.

Character is power.