David Oyelowo

"I am told that you no longer wish for me to honor my duties to serve you as your king because of the color of the wife I have chosen. South Africa's racialist disease has infected all our neighboring countries and us. Look around you! Our schools, hospitals, churches, all segregated in practice if not in law. Are we to now uphold the abomination that is apartheid in our own culture? The very same abomination that has been oppressing us for decades! Is this to the future for our Africa? We should not be fighting for segregation! We should be fighting for equality! That is where we should be focusing our minds, not on the wife I have chosen, who means you no harm! Whose only apparent crime has been to fall in love with me, and mine to fall in love with her! I cannot serve you without her by my side, but I cannot force you to accept this! Africa can never be free until all those who live in her, white and black, recognize that race must have no bearing on equality and justice! I am ready to serve you, because I love my people! I love this land! But I love my wife!"

"No man is free who is not master of himself. It is time for us to create a new nation, a new Africa! It is time for democracy, for independence, for us to be the masters of our own faith! It is time!"

"Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong. You belong where you believe you belong. Where is that for you?"
[to Phiona]

Louis Gaines: "Something special is going on down here, Dad."
Cecil Gaines: "What's so special about another colored man in jail?"

Cooper: "You're ruling my son out for college now? The kid's fifteen."
Principal: "Tom's score simply isn't high enough."
Cooper: "What's your waistline? 32? With, what, a 33 inseam?"
Principal: "I'm not sure I see what you're getting at."
Cooper: "You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?"

"We didn't run out of planes and television sets. We ran out of food."

Louis Gaines: "Charlie, don't do this. Don't do this. This country treats us like dogs!"
Charlie Gaines: "And do what? Don't do this? You fight your country. I want to fight for my country."

[watching through a whole in a wall as children take out a chess board to play]
Robert Katende: "Young girl, come inside. What is your name?"
Phiona: "Phiona."
[to one of the young girls]
Robert Katende: "Could you please show Phiona how to move the pieces?"