America can no longer afford to be as arrogant as we've been. We can no longer exempt ourselves from the global family of concern.

Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.

In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.

I am who I am despite what America has put before me. I am who I am despite the obstacles that we have all faced based upon race and based upon social and spiritual humiliation.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.

Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.

These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country.

We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.

Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?

It's my belief that people enter your life at exactly the right time.

Prayer is divine.

[T]he vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.

At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.

Nobody's easier to fool, than the person who is convinced that he is right.

You wiggle to the left, you wiggle to the right, you do the Ooby Dooby with all your might.

They're not supposed to show prison films in prison. Especially ones that are about escaping.

We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.