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.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

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

When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love of humanity.

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

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.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader – or any person – in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

Death wasn’t part of God’s original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy – the last enemy to be destroyed.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

No matter the nationality, no matter the religion, no matter the ethnic background, America brings out the best in people.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

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.

Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

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

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

Our love, our gratitude, our admiration for our men and women in uniform, our veterans and their families – all of that is bigger than any one party or any one election.

Let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

Children are all foreigners.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

I think there’s more women that watch me than men, but I don’t look at myself as just a minister to women. My ministry began that way, but I really feel like the Word of God is for everybody.

The American people have not become heartless.

Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

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.

Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

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

I don’t just listen to rap.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns?

Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.