Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

On wrongs swift vengeance waits.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

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

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

The ‚peace movement‘ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

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.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

All men are equal before fish.

Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?

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.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

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.

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.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

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 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.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

I think there are a whole host of things that are civil rights, and then there are other things – such as traditional marriage – that, I think, express a community’s concern and regard for a particular institution.

More law, less justice.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

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?

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

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

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it’s American or British interests involved.

I was a proponent of the ERA. The women of my generation and my daughter’s generation, they were very active in moving along the social change that would result in equal citizenship stature for men and women.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

Actually oddly enough, I think my work, the activism, will be forgotten. And I hope it will. Because I hope those problems will have gone away.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

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.

DACA recipients risk a lot to come out of the shadows & sign up, but many will tell you the risk is worth being able to live and work in the only country they’ve ever known as home. DACA recipients serve in our military, work in Fortune 100 companies, and conduct important medical research.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

I can’t help the way you was born if you was gay.

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 don’t even call them fans. I don’t like that. They’re literally just a part of my life; they’re a part of my family. I don’t think of them as on a lower level than me. I don’t think I’m anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they’re basically all of my siblings.

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

For years, decades, the system has taught us to stay quiet. They’ve made us believe that those who take to the streets to speak up are crazy, criminals, troublemakers.

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

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

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

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

I want a president who will teach our children that everyone in this country matters, a president who truly believes in the vision that our Founders put forth all those years ago that we are all created equal, each a beloved part of the great American story.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

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