“The truth is, no man is white and no man is black. We are all freckled.”

Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was fifth.

In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality.

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.

The man who fights for his fellow-man is a better man than the one who fights for himself.

I feel as I always have, that the earth is the home and the only home of man, and I am convinced that whatever he is to get out of his existence he must get while he is here.

Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes.

No man is a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good friend, or a good man just because he obeys the law. The intrinsic worth is determined mainly by the intrinsic make-up.

Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that can beguile the brain and soul of man.

I have lived my life, and I have fought my battles, not against the weak and the poor – anybody can do that – but against power, against injustice, against oppression, and I have asked no odds from them, and I never shall.

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

It must always be remembered that all laws are naturally and inevitably evolved by the strongest force in a community, and in the last analysis made for the protection of the dominant class.

The trouble with law is lawyers.

There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action.

The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrong from its hostile and unwilling serfs.

Having grown up in a segregated environment in the south I know what it’s like to be stepped on, I know what it’s like also to see some black hero do well in the face of adversity.

I’m racist? How can that even be possible? I was a friend of Michael Jackson’s back when he was black.

When you’re black, you have to deal with so much crap in your life from other black people. It’s a dirty, dark secret; I’m glad it’s coming out.

I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports.

I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports.

Poor white people and poor black people just don’t know how much they have in common. Rich people don’t give a damn about either group.

If you’re black in this country, if you’re a woman in this country, if you are any minority in this country at all, what could possibly possess you to vote Republican?

Unfortunately, as I tell my white friends, we as black people, we’re never going to be successful not because of you white people but because of other black people.