When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.

I became a much more ardent citizen and feminist than anyone about me in the intermediate years would have dreamed possible. I had learned that if you wanted to institute any kind of reform, you could get far more attention if you had a vote than if you lacked one.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

The precepts of the law may be comprehended under these three points: to live honestly, to hurt no man willfully, and to render every man his due carefully.

It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange...Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.

I would like to flood South Africa with black personages of all sorts of persuasions: writers, educators, businessmen, you name it. If you are black and have any clout at all, I would like to see you go to South Africa and look for yourself and come back and try to use the tools that you have at your command to try and help the brothers down there.

Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, 'What shall we do with the Negro?' I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

To say 'radical feminist' is only a way of indicating that I believe the sexual caste system is a root of race and class and other divisions.

All human beings are inherently good, so when someone goes off the rails, there must be some mitigating factor - he was bullied, was a loner, had an abusive father, or a domineering mother, etc.