You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.

As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers - a great pity, on both counts.

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want? Take away an accident of pigmentation of a thin layer of our outer skin and there is no difference between me and anyone else. All we want is for that trivial difference to make no difference.

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo.

My God, what do we want? What does any human being want?

I don’t measure America by its achievement but by its potential.