We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

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

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

For 25 years countless people have come to the U.N. climate conferences begging our world leaders to stop emissions and clearly that has not worked as emissions are continuing to rise. So I will not beg the world leaders to care for our future. I will instead let them know change is coming whether they like it or not.

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.

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.

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.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

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.

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

I would like to see a future where artists think that they have a right to contemplate things like global warming.

It’s a blessing that South Africa has a man like Nelson Mandela.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

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.

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

I’ve never written a political song. Songs can’t save the world. I’ve gone through all that.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

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 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.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

Wall Street apparently takes and then forgets, and then comes after the guns of law-abiding American citizens and small businesses.

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

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

Yes, I’m still going to misbehave!

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the injection of working at the Carter Center, and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on environment, and things of that kind.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

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

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.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

My son Emilio is running for Congress to continue the fight for social justice.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve rarely kept my distance from kind of – I don’t know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, ‚Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.‘

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their ‚democratic‘ right to vote.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency.

Even when folks are hitting you over the head, you can’t stop marching. Even when they’re turning the hoses on you, you can’t stop.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

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

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?

The ‚anti-globalisation movement‘ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

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

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.