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

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

We can’t afford not to educate girls and give women the power and the access that they need.

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.

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

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

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

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.

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.

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

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off – we do not have to stand for this.

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

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.

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 world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they’re not discriminated on the job.

The environmentalists say capitalism is killing our oceans, air, land, and forests. Capitalists argue that they provide food, fuel, and building materials for a growing world.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

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.

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

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

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many.

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

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.

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 should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

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.

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.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

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

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

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.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

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

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.

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

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.

Socialism never arises in the earlier phases of capitalism, as, for instance, among the pioneers of civilisation in a country where there is plenty of land available for private appropriation by the last comer.

I always have been an activist for things that were just authentically a part of my life, that I felt connected to.

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

There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

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 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.

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

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

In the summer of 1966, I went to Mississippi to be in the heart of the civil-rights movement, helping people who had been thrown off the farms or taken off the welfare roles for registering to vote. While working there, I met the civil-rights lawyer I later married – we became an interracial couple.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

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.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.