When even one American – who has done nothing wrong – is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth – then all Americans are in peril.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

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.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

We can’t allow the world’s worst leaders to blackmail, threaten, hold freedom-loving nations hostage with the world’s worst weapons.

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

One way to make sure crime doesn’t pay would be to let the government run it.

All of these young people have some kind of potential in them. And if we don’t invest in them as a nation, regardless of where they come from or what color they are, if we don’t invest in them, we lose.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

At the start of the season, there are 16 teams in the top division looking behind them, making sure they avoid relegation. The fear starts in the boardroom, comes down to managers and through to players. The fans sense it.

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go.

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one’s beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

True nobility is exempt from fear.

Each time we cooperate with God, we take one more giant step forward. Because when God asks us to change, it means that He always has something better to give us – more freedom, greater joy, and greater blessings.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

No man has any natural authority over his fellow men.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.

If there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence.

I see the face of a child. He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he’s an American child.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.

We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

A strong man doesn’t have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn’t match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

I was arrested three times and tortured once.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence.

In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in that we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.

I will not sit in a room with black people when the N word is used. I know it was meant to belittle a person, so I will not sit there and have that poison put on me. Now a black person can say, ‚Oh, you know, I can use this word because I’m black.‘

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.