Since the world has existed, there has been injustice. But it is one world, the more so as it becomes smaller, more accessible. There is just no question that there is more obligation that those who have should give to those who have nothing.

Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.

Sing me a new song; the world is transfigured; all the Heavens are rejoicing.

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.

The name Muhammad is the most common name in the world. In all the countries around the world – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon – there are more Muhammads than anything else. When I joined the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim, they gave me the most famous name because I was the champ.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

America… just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

The problem with fine art is that in most cases people have to make a special excursion to go and look at it: they can’t afford to own it. So it isn’t really part of their life in the way that music can be.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

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

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

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.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

Unfortunately, in a recession, the people who suffer the most aren’t the rich, but the wanna-be rich and the poor.

‚Whole Women’s Health‘ made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

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.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

People who identify themselves as conservatives donate money to charity more often than people who identify themselves as liberals. They donate more money and a higher percentage of their incomes.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

When I ask people to give, I can’t be on television if they don’t; I can’t help people, if I don’t – I mean, it takes money.

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

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.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.

I am the freest author in the world.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.

God has given us two hands – one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

I was born realizing the flaws in the criminal justice system.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

It is comforting to reflect that the disproportion of things in the world seems to be only arithmetical.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

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.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

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

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

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

My favorite time in the cycles of public life is the time when the Pope is dead and they haven’t elected a new one. There’s no one in the world who is infallible for those weeks. And you know, I don’t miss it.