Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

I don’t feel bitterness, I don’t feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.

Our goal in the ’70s was to end the closed door era. There were so many things that were off limits to women: policing, firefighting, mining, piloting planes.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up and demand – demand – demand change.

The reason people think it’s important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be black.

Chinese people themselves, they really want change.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

I think the self-burning itself on practice of non-violence. These people, you see, they easily use bomb explosive, more casualty people. But they didn’t do that. Only sacrifice their own life. So this also is part of practice of non-violence.

Education is indoctrination if you’re white – subjugation if you’re black.

It’s empowering to know I am doing something, I am taking a stand, I am disrupting.

I love the women’s movement, and I never thought of it as belonging to any particular segment of the population.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

There’s a lack of people in power that are motivated by the idea of helping people.

I want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

It’s a facet of the gay rights movement that people don’t think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s ‚head and master rule,‘ that the husband was head and master of the house.

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

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.

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.

Yup, the whole birther movement was racist.

It was the wont of the immortal gods sometimes to grant prosperity and long impunity to men whose crimes they were minded to punish in order that a complete reverse of fortune might make them suffer more bitterly.

Because the sweeter the cake, the more bitter the jelly can be.

You can rebel in different ways. Civil disobedience is rebelling. As long as it’s peaceful, of course.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

Bitterness is cancer – it eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq’s Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq’s Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

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

There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.

Be extra careful in the work environment with those who like to maintain their position through charm and being political, rather than getting things done. They are very prone to envying and hating those who work hard and get results. They will slander and sabotage you without any warning.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

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

The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

The best thing about my protest has been to see how more and more people have been coming and getting involved.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

Let us remember we are all part of one American family. We are united in common values, and that includes belief in equality under the law, basic respect for public order, and the right of peaceful protest.

I don’t mind living in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

I’m trying to make the world a more open place.