There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

Little things affect little minds.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish – people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people – and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

When I look at public opinion, I’m not far out of the mainstream. I’m in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I’ve ever said.

The wide world is all about you: you can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.

Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

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.

I think any life can be interesting, any surroundings can be interesting. I don’t think I could have been so brave if I had been living in a town, competing with people on what can be called a generally higher cultural level.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I’ve seen on some of the songs that I’ve written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.

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

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

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.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Life is a song to me.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America – there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America – there’s the United States of America.

By ancestry, I was born to rule.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

The good things of prosperity are to be wished; but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired.

A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Youth is wasted on the young.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who’s been successful at another college program, they’re going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.

He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

In the ’70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.