Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.

You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

The jump is so frightening between where I am and where I want to be... because of all I may become I will close my eyes and leap!

The choice to believe is yours. It’s the only thing that truly is.

She had been born with a face that would let her get away, he saw that face and he lost all control.

It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them or to improve them; it is only necessary to live among them, sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.

The connection, that's what's important - that through this medium we can, perhaps, understand and touch each other.

It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.

It is common for rural hospitals and nursing homes to operate as a single unit in order to take advantage of savings related to cost-sharing of some services and staff.

Remember, your prerogative is to govern, and not to serve the things of this world.

Speak from the heart to be heard.