The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

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

There are thousands of Palestinians in prison virtually for no reason.

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.

The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

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.

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.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

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

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

I think everyone should be with who they love.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

Racism is real in this country.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

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.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

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.

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

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States – old as well as new – North as well as South.

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‚Ich bin ein Berliner!‘

When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

Every country must be absolutely free to adopt the type of economic, political and social system that it considers convenient.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.