Racism is real in this country.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

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

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating… because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You’re not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

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

We’re a diverse society, and I think the TV is doing a great job in showing that we’re all human beings, that we can all get along, that we can all be together, and I think that’s a marvelous thing.

I care about helping to address these problems of social cohesion and understanding what economic problems people think exist.

After the chaos and carnage of September 11th, it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it’s so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women… no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

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

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

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It’s got a bit busier since the ’60s, but the more the merrier!

Freedom is not enough.

It’s hard not to have a big year at the Supreme Court.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

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.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

Giving a poor person money keeps them poor.

Neither the Christian attitude of love for all mankind nor humane hopes for an organized society must cause us to forget that the ‚human stratum‘ may not be homogeneous.