We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.

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

I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family it says they’re looting, if you see a white family it says they’re looking for food.

Women should be obscene and not heard.

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

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

You’ve got to watch the politics of AIDS. The politics of AIDS can work both for and against the victims of AIDS.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

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

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

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.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

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

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.

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

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.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

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

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

Nobody has ever convinced me that race is real.

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

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country.

I favor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and it must be enforced at gunpoint if necessary.

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

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

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

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

I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

I was the first tenured woman at Columbia. That was 1972; every law school was looking for its woman. Why? Because Stan Pottinger, who was then head of the office for civil rights of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was enforcing the Nixon government contract program.

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

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.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

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 detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

I’m not focused on the gay and lesbian movement.

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.

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.

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

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

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.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

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.

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.

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

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.