Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

I’ve known for years that the university underserved the community, because we assumed that university education is for 18- to 22-year-olds, which is a proposition that’s so absurd it is absolutely mind-boggling that anyone ever conceptualized it. Why wouldn’t you take university courses throughout your entire life?

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.

The Paralympic Games is about transforming our perception of the world.

It’s not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Women’s liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It’s men who are discriminated against. They can’t bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

I’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, if I die by four o’clock.

The answer to the problem of inequality is for the people who are fortunate enough to either have been gifted or deserved more to do everything they can to make the communities around them as strong as they possibly can.

We need to try to unite audiences, unite countries, join musical tastes, unite people.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

Whoever does not regard what he has as most ample wealth, is unhappy, though he be master of the world.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

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

Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out.

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

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

A great mind becomes a great fortune.

When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man.

I definitely don’t think that money can buy you love. It can buy you affection but certainly not love.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

In this country, it doesn’t make any difference where you were born. It doesn’t make any difference who your parents were. It doesn’t make any difference if, like me, you couldn’t even speak English until you were in your twenties.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

May we do good everywhere as we have opportunity, and results will not be wanting!

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.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

Freedom is not enough.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

I am a just man.

Be as polite to the custodian as you are to the chairman of the board.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

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.

I think the self-burning itself on practice of non-violence. These people, you see, they easily use bomb explosive, more casualty people. But they didn’t do that. Only sacrifice their own life. So this also is part of practice of non-violence.

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.

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.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God’s children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who’s spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him.