“I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising.”

“We are living in the midst of a social revolution in our society. My heart's cry is wake up, wake up America, before it's too late.”

“I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.”

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”

“Both the unlimited state and the unrestrained market have destroyed civil society, which is our world. … Civil society is something that is not the state or the market. Civil society is the world of you and I.”

“There must be an end to white monopoly on political power, and a fundamental restructuring of our political and economic systems to ensure that the inequalities of apartheid are addressed and our society thoroughly democratized.”

“A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.”

“All you have to do is touch my hand
To show me you understand
And something happens to me.
That's some kind of wonderful.”

“Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.”

“The Lord will always send a people wake-up calls. And he has been sending us wake-up call, after wake-up call, after a wake-up call. … He has been sending us wake-up calls, and you can send two kinds of wake-up calls. One through fear, like 9/11. 9/11 woke us up, and we stood shoulder-to-shoulder for a very short period of time.”