White people just don’t want their slaves to be free. That’s the whole thing.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

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

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

I think, in many people’s minds, the Confederate battle flag is not only a memorial to our ancestors, which is perfectly OK, but also a symbol of white superiority and an inclination for people to believe that even slavery would’ve been OK.

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?

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

We all have wings, but they have not been of any avail to us and if we could tear them off, we would do so.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

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

If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!

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

Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.

He who is brave is free.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

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.

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

I don’t think the Tea Party people are racist, except maybe a tiny portion of them. But there has been a deliberate effort – again, referring to Fox Broadcasting – to inject the race issue into it. They have actually called Obama a racist on television.

Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

I just know that I’m a fan of all different kinds of genres. You’re supposed to be free doing music, and that’s how I feel.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

Civil disobedience is – it’s no fun.

The polls show that concern over inequality among the general public rose pretty sharply after the Occupy movement started, very probably as a consequence. And there are other policy issues that came to the fore, which are significant.

Freedom lies in being bold.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.

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.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature – opposition to it is his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely, as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

Too many Christians live their lives like slaves – to the devil – because they believe his lies more than they trust God.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death.

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

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

We humans for millions of years were nomadic. We associated freedom and well-being with the ability to move into open spaces, to find places more suited to hunting.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.

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.

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.

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.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

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

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

We can be thankful to a friend for a few acres, or a little money; and yet for the freedom and command of the whole earth, and for the great benefits of our being, our life, health, and reason, we look upon ourselves as under no obligation.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we’ve got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.