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

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.

So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it’s one that’s easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one ‚race‘ – the human race – and that we are all members of it.

We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

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

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

To innovate is not to reform.

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

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

Those who ‚abjure‘ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

I don’t stand for the black man’s side, I don‘ t stand for the white man’s side. I stand for God’s side.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

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

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

I suppose we need not go mourning the buffaloes. In the nature of things, they had to give place to better cattle, though the change might have been made without barbarous wickedness.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

For me, when you are have people wondering what is next, what is coming out, you are on the right track.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

I personally have always been in favor of people who are gay being permitted to marry legally – and I still feel that way.

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

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.

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 should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

In order to fulfill the aspirations of masses, we have to sharpen the tool called the government machinery: we have to make it keen, more dynamic, and it is in this direction that we are working.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

If you want to appeal to everyone, you can’t do a world tour and expect black people to show up at every date – when you’re in Australia, when you’re in Dubai, when you’re in Indonesia.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

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

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

There are no favorites in my office. I treat them all with the same general inconsideration.

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.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

We must begin seeing other creatures as equal. Existence makes us all equal.

The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress.

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

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.

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you’re exactly the same.

In the literal sense, there has been no relevant evolution since the trek from Africa. But there has been substantial progress towards higher standards of rights, justice and freedom – along with all too many illustrations of how remote is the goal of a decent society.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

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.