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

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We’re standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

We must make it clear that a platform of ‚I hate gay men and women‘ is not a way to become president of the United States.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin‘ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

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.

If I had been white with the things I did, they never would have allowed me to get out of baseball.

Some of these Ivy League kids want to have it both ways. They want to be baby members of the 1 percent, which they most certainly are, and yet still portray themselves as the oppressed.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

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.

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?

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.

I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.

Our generation in the west was lucky: we had readymade gateways. We had books, paper, teachers, schools and libraries. But many in the world lack these luxuries. How do you practice without such tryout venues?

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.

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.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

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.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

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

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

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

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute – a white skin.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

We pledge ourselves to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination.

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

There is no scriptural basis for segregation.

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.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

We’ve never advocated violence; violence is inflicted upon us. But we do believe in self-defense for ourselves and for black people.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

Black Power is giving power to people who have not had power to determine their destiny.

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

As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.