The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Life isn’t fair, but God is.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

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.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

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.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

The uniform makes for brotherhood, since when universally adopted it covers up all differences of class and country.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Error is always more busy than truth.

Man is a universe within himself.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it’s one that’s easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

The battle for women’s rights has been largely won.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

There is plenty of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by, and the problem will remain the same.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.