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

No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

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

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

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.

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.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Peace begins with a smile.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

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

I look after people.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

The ideals and principles for which Dr King fought have never been forgotten and are as relevant today as they were 40 years ago.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

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.

Jesus never mistreated anyone just because they mistreated Him. He confronted them in a spirit of gentleness and then continued to love them.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

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.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

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

I’ve been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

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

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

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.

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

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