“I think we must be careful about too easily accepting, or being too easily grateful for, sacrifices made by others, especially if we have made none ourselves.”

A Declaration of Independence (12 March 1964) http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1148
Variant: We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.
Context: There can be no black-white unity until there is first some black unity. There can be no workers' solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. One can't unite bananas with scattered leaves.

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 21 (p. 204)

Source: Elegies, Lines 421-423, as translated by Dorothea Wender.

Hardball with Chris Matthews, 11 February 2005

Abbiate cura che non v'inganniate, pensando forse meritar piú con l'esser clemente che con l'esser giusta; perché perdonando troppo a chi falla si fa ingiuria a chi non falla.
Bk. 1, ch. 23; p. 32
Souced, Il Libro del Cortegiano (1528)

Source: River Marked

Interview http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/85_01_20.pdf in Marxism Today, January 1985.
Context: I'm interested in the division that Judeo-Christianity has made between human nature and animal nature. None of the other great faiths in the world have got quite that division between us and them. None of the others has made this enormous division between birds and beasts who, as Darwin said, would have developed consciences if they'd had the chance, and us. I think it's one of the scars in Western Europe. I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.

F 54
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)