We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

We have the resources to build room for a trillion humans in this solar system, and when we have a trillion humans, we’ll have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts. It will be a way more interesting place to live.

There are millions of Americans outside Washington who are tired of stale political arguments and are moving this country forward. They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa, and if we’re honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

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.

But there’s so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That’s where we are. We don’t get our hair caught in it, but that’s the level of primitiveness of where we are. We’re in 1908.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

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

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

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

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

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Well begun is half done.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

I think that all people who feel that there is injustice in the world anywhere should learn as much of it as they can bear. That is our duty.

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.

What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

Even though you are on the right track – you will get run over if you just sit there.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

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.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

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

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 am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

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.

America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles of justice and progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.

Women feel empowered when they can do the things that are supposed to be only for men, you know? It breaks boundaries, it’s liberating, and it’s empowering when you feel like, ‚Well, I can do that, too.‘

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

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

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

Homophobia is real in this country.

All men are equal before fish.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

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.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

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

The credit of advancing science has always been due to individuals and never to the age.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

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

If I have a platform and a voice, I should use it for my people.

Man can never be a woman’s equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

Girls shouldn’t worry about being the equal of men in the business world.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.