Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

No one is pro-abortion.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

It’s time for the human race to enter the solar system.

There are thousands of boys being wasted daily to our country through being left to become characterless, and, therefore, useless wasters, a misery to themselves and an eyesore and a danger to the nation. They could be saved if only the right surroundings or environment were given to them at the receptive time of their lives.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

Hate crime is not new in the United States.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty, I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‚Is this it? Are we still relevant?‘

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

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

All I can say is I am sensitive to discrimination on any basis because I have experienced that upset.

Soon, I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.

I was not an activist.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

They say miracles are past.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson speaks to broader challenges that we still face as a nation. The fact is, in too many parts of this country, a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

I do hope that some of my dissents will one day be the law.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past changes in the present invariable order of society.

The future will be better tomorrow.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

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.‘

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

The ‚peace movement‘ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

Sexism is everywhere, bro. I don’t know if it’s ever not somewhere.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews – everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.

Everywhere I go I find that people… both leaders and individuals… are asking one basic question, ‚Is there any hope for the future?‘ My answer is the same, ‚Yes, through Jesus Christ.‘

The artists of the past who impressed me were the ones who really focused their work.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.