Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

I’m opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I think everyone should be with who they love.

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

States should have the right to enact laws… particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.

Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn’t.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

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

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

I don’t believe in guilt; I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person. And don’t judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free.

All I’m for is the liberty of the individual.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

The minute you got the Nobel Peace Prize, things that I said yesterday, with nobody paying too much attention, I say the same things after I got it – oh! It was quite crucial for people, and it helped our morale because apartheid did look invincible.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

Let freedom reign. The sun never set on so glorious a human achievement.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

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.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

I had had a continuing smoldering fury about the treatment of Jews in Germany.

You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.

Consciously or unconsciously most of us adhere to what is expected of our role because we realize our social success depends on this. Some may refuse to play this game, but in the end they are marginalized and forced to play the outsider role, with limited options and decreasing freedom as they get older.

And every human being is precious.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.

We must be willing to pay a price for freedom.

Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

We don’t want to promote any system that treats the fact that an individual is LGBT as a personality disorder. And anything that perpetuates that perception is harmful – not only to that member of the community but the entire community.

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Even in the United States, the enslavement of African descendants continued until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. That brutal form of slavery was abolished there hardly thirty years before it was abolished in Cuba.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.