To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

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

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

I am such a political person.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

The U.S. military was segregated ‚til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been more than patient in seeking our rights as American citizens.

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.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

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.

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

Racism is real in this country.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

‚Whole Women’s Health‘ made it very clear that poor women were no longer going to be left out.

Hate crime is not new in the United States.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

To be awake is to be alive.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a ‚continent,‘ a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.

Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

We must make it clear that a platform of ‚I hate gay men and women‘ is not a way to become president of the United States.

Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

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

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

People tell me that they are so hopeful when they see me and other children ‚school-striking,‘ and they say, ‚Oh the children are going to save us.‘ But no, we aren’t. We are too young to be able to do that. We don’t have time to wait for us to grow up and fix this in the future.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

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.

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

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

It’s a well-known fact that tall people are evil.

Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?

White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president?

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American.

George Bush doesn’t care about black people.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

I’m very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn’t choose.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.