Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

I am two with nature.

Man, all lives matter.

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

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.

Wherever I go meeting the public… spreading a message of human values, spreading a message of harmony, is the most important thing.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

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

Respect the burden.

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

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

I advocate that every woman be a part of a circle, and a circle that meets at least once a month, or if you can’t do that, once every two months or every four months.

I think ‚Dirty Harry‘ was probably sensitive toward the victims of violent crime.

One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

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.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

Some of the most moving experiences I’ve had are just in black churches in the South, during the Civil Rights Movement, where people were getting beaten, killed, really struggling for the most elementary rights.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.

Do not be afraid to ask for help. Nobody gets through college on their own.

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

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

There are disasters that happen – Hurricane Harvey came up, and you had people self-organizing through the community and getting in boats and driving around rescuing people coordinated ad hoc through this network. That’s not a media function.

The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death… these are things that unite us all.

My aim is to create a happy society with genuine friendship. Friendship between Tibetan and Chinese peoples is very essential.

We all have to live together, so we might as well live together happily.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

The ‚New Testament‘, now, I quite liked. Jesus had a lot of good things to say, and as for his father, he must have been highly thought of by the community to work with wood – a material that couldn’t have been widely available in Palestine.

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.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.

A man will speedily sit down and sympathize with a friend’s griefs, but if he sees him honored and esteemed, he is apt to regard him as a rival and does not so readily rejoice with him. This ought not to be; without effort, we ought to be happy in our brother’s happiness.

There will be gay couples; it will exist. It is not very nice that people who are married – who divorce in three seconds – don’t want protection for the others. The legal system should protect everyone, not just the few people who think they are above everybody else because they are married.

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.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.