We believe that every single child has boundless promise, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money their parents have. We’ve got to remember that. We believe that each of these young people is a vital part of the great American story.

Gay marriage is going to happen. It must.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

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 twice armed if we fight with faith.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

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.

A cynical young person is almost the saddest sight to see, because it means that he or she has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

I have some good friends of my own who happen to be gay, and when it comes to gay, straight, or whatever, I’m for anything life-affirmative. I’m for gay power, straight power, male power, female power; everybody should feel empowered without oppressing anyone who’s different.

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.

Martyrs do not underrate the body, they allow it to be elevated on the cross. In this they are at one with their antagonists.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

We don’t want two-tier people in America. Those who are legal but not citizens, and citizens.

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

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

What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do some thing about them.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

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.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

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

Everyone is different. Everyone has different teams they’ve played on, coaches they’ve played for.

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.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike.

Not only does God play dice, but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

I can’t believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

Our faith is released as we say, pray and do the Word.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

Religion is the opium of the masses.

I never played with anything like toys.

People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

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.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

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

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

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

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

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

Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.