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

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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.

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

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

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.

I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right.

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people – and to hate those other people.

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

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

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 white man is destroying the world.

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.

Bigotry is the sacred disease.

So many killings of black men in my lifetime. The physical shock is astounding.

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don’t give a damn about my future, I won’t either.

Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it’s like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can’t really speak on it, because I wasn’t there. I don’t feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

Homophobia is real in this country.

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.

People who have been hardworking, tax paying, those people ought to be given an opportunity to be on a track that leads towards citizenship, and if that happened, then they wouldn’t be prey to the employers who say, ‚We want you because we know that you work for a salary we could not lawfully pay anyone else.‘

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

I ain’t never called nobody no redskin. I’ve never been mad, like, ‚Get out of this restaurant, you redskin.‘

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

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.

I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

Eternal principles that govern happiness apply equally to all.

The American dream belongs to all of us.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Science is global. Einstein’s equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

I want to support other women because of the opportunities I’ve had – and I’ve had a lot of opportunities. What I try as a female director is to do the best job I can and, in the meantime, bring attention to as many other female directors and writers as I can.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

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.

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

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

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

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

The battle for the individual rights of women is one of long standing and none of us should countenance anything which undermines it.

Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.

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.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.