There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

Motives reveal why we do what we do, which is actually more important to God than what we’re doing.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

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.

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?

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.

Science is global. Einstein’s equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

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.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

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

Nothing good ever comes of violence.

An index is a great leveller.

I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.

If I hit a man, his head is gonna go into the bleachers.

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

For way too long the politicians and people in power have got away with not doing anything at all to fight the climate crisis and ecological crisis.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

If you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.

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 trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn’t want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

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

I’m going to stay active as long as I can politically, and with the Carter Center primarily, and if I’m able mentally and physically, will continue to be quite active.

In any decision for action, when you have to make up your mind what to do, there is always a ‚should‘ involved, and this cannot be worked out from, ‚If I do this, what will happen?‘ alone.

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

Under Clinton, the defiance of world order has become so extreme as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts.

After the first blush of sin comes its indifference.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

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

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.

Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

I suspect that even most conservatives would prefer to live in the kind of world conjured up in the liberals‘ imagination rather than in the kind of world we are in fact stuck with.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

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

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

All men are equal before fish.