The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

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.

There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

A good wife is one who serves her husband in the morning like a mother does, loves him in the day like a sister does and pleases him like a prostitute in the night.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, ‚Oh, you know, I can use this word because I’m black.‘

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

The effort to try to present the Social Security program as if it’s a major problem, that’s just a hidden way of trying to undermine and destroy it.

We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism.

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

To terrify children with the image of hell… to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?

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

These men ask for just the same thing, fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.

I want a president with a record of public service, someone whose life’s work shows our children that we don’t chase fame and fortune for ourselves: we fight to give everyone a chance to succeed.

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.

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church – things like that – I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

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.

Man, all lives matter.

Man can never be a woman’s equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

I think everybody deserves an equal amount of appreciation whether how old they are, but I mean, I’m cool with the praise. I’m good.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

Me only have one ambition, y’know. I only have one thing I really like to see happen. I like to see mankind live together – black, white, Chinese, everyone – that’s all.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

I realized quickly what Mandela and Tambo meant to ordinary Africans. It was a place where they could come and find a sympathetic ear and a competent ally, a place where they would not be either turned away or cheated, a place where they might actually feel proud to be represented by men of their own skin color.

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

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

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

Eternal principles that govern happiness apply equally to all.

Homophobia is real in this country.

Racism and sexism, misogyny and homophobia, they’re so visible. They’re out in the open. When they’re visible, it’s a lot easier to deal with them.

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

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

I want to support other women because of the opportunities I’ve had – and I’ve had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

If I write badly about blacks, homosexuals and women, it is because of these who I met were that. There are many ‚bads‘ – bad dogs, bad censorship; there are even ‚bad‘ white males. Only, when you write about ‚bad‘ white males, they don’t complain about it. And need I say that there are ‚good‘ blacks, ‚good‘ homosexuals and ‚good‘ women?

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.