We’re all just a bunch of sinners, but we do the best we can.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

I never had a speech from my father ‚this is what you must do or shouldn’t do‘ but I just learned to be led by example. My father wasn’t perfect.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

God just has a way of working things out the way he wants to and you have no say in that.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

It doesn’t matter how long my hair is or what colour my skin is or whether I’m a woman or a man.

I can’t help the way you was born if you was gay.

Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

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

I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists.

Accept the terrible responsibility of life with eyes wide open.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.

I am not promising that God will give you everything you want. There are times when we want things that God knows would not be good for us.

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

I’m gonna make what I want to make, and other people are gonna like what they’re gonna like. It doesn’t really matter.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

We do not judge the people we love.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.

During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.

I do think that a minister who can preach a sermon without addressing sinners does not know how to preach.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

I always like to create things that get attention. It used to be a problem when I wasn’t famous. Now, I can do whatever I want and people have to accept it.

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it’s so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them.

I never expect to see a perfect work from an imperfect man.

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.