And at home in the United States we found continued and increased persecution, first of leaders of the Communist Party, and then of all honest anti-fascists.

My father was a slave and my people died to build this country and I am going to stay here and have a part of it just like you.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic but to end the injustice.

The faces and the tactics of the leaders may change every four years, or two, or one, but the people go on forever.

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

Artists are the gate keepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.

In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.

We ask for nothing that is not ours by right, and herein lies the great moral power of our demand.

Through my singing and acting and speaking, I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people's hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.

My future depends mostly upon myself.

Art is not just to show life as it is, but to show life as it should be.

Environment is no one's property to destroy

Never give up on the possibilities or accept what is when you can see it for what it could be.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Don't try to help people to 'not die', help them to enjoy life!

Champions behave like champions before they are champions

Though he should conquer a thousand men in the battlefield a thousand times, yet he, indeed, who would conquer himself is the noblest victor.

Leave that which is not, but appears to be. Seek that which is, but is not apparent.

When you're making a film you're thinking about how to tell the story visually.

Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.

Ben was a very simple straightforward man with a brilliant quick mind.