Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

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

Every citizen has the real right to receive general education and professional training at no cost, something that the United States has not been able to ensure for all its inhabitants.

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

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.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

The realities are that, you know, as a black man, you know, Barack can get shot going to the gas station, you know.

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.

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

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

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off – we do not have to stand for this.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

We don’t want two-tier people in America. Those who are legal but not citizens, and citizens.

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

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

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

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

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.

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.

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.

You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

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.

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.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

When you’re doing a film and the majority of the film is cast black, for me, it’s most important to get people to view those movies as just movies, as just good movies. At the end of the day, regardless of the color of the cast, we’re all doing the same thing in this business: trying to make a good film.

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.‘

You know what should be banned? Stuff that’s whack. The world is controversial. The world is classist. The world is racist.

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

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972; every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program.

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

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

All men are equal before fish.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

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.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

What I believe unites the people of this nation, regardless of race or region or party, young or old, rich or poor, is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all – the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

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.

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

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.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.