To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don’t think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism, Islam or other faiths.

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.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

Death is acceptable only if it represents the physically necessary passage toward a union, the condition of a metamorphosis.

One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things – he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

El Salvador is a democracy so it’s not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans… I have heard a single voice.

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

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

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

There are so many men and women who hold no distinctive positions but whose contribution towards the development of society has been enormous.

Above all, this country is our own. Nobody has to get up in the morning and worry what his neighbors think of him. Being a Jew is no problem here.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

We are a nation of communities… a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God’s children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

I’ve still not written as well as I want to. I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, ‚You know, that’s the truth. I wasn’t there, and I wasn’t a six-foot black girl, but that’s the truth.‘

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to endulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception.

Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn’t matter which color does the hating. It’s just plain wrong.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

Trump just looks stupid trying to appeal to blacks and Latinos.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

God doesn’t love me any more or less because I had some work done on my face. You know, I prayed about it a long, long, long, long, long time, because there again, I wouldn’t want to do anything that I felt was going to be offensive to God.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

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.

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.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

We are moving towards a world that is reordering itself and that may appear more ordered at some periods of time, but I see no sign that we are moving towards a world order in my definition of it – namely, a system which is accepted, which is internalized by the majority of the key participants.

Honestly, I like everything, boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny.

What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal – that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

And every human being is precious.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn’t matter if you have a beautiful face or not.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins.

If we do not lift up women and families, everyone will fall short.

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.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

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.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

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.

Maybe every city has a unique sensibility, but we don’t have names for what they are or haven’t identified them all. We can’t pinpoint exactly what makes each city’s people unique yet.

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don’t want to be a colony in a nation.