The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.

Modesty forbids what the law does not.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

I’m not a reality-TV kind of guy. But it’s almost like we’re living in a reality show. Every day in this country, everybody keeps worrying about the deterioration of America, and it’s like a big reality show.

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

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

I rely on other people every day of my life.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

I think America has always been polarized.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

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.

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

There are some loony people in this world!

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Without a moral framework, there is nothing left but immediate self-indulgence by some and the path of least resistance by others. Neither can sustain a free society.

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

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

If you want someone to say, ‚She’s so sweet, and she’s so cute, and, honey, point your foot,‘ that’s not my school. You can go to the YMCA and have a nobody teach your kid if that’s what you want to hear.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

Doing what’s right isn’t the problem. It is knowing what’s right.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life.

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.