I became a part of the Civil Rights movement early on and that has really shaped a great deal of my thinking.

I think social change work is some of the most extraordinary dreaming that any of us have the possibility of doing.

We gain power in our refusal to accept less than we deserve.

Everyone's always told about politics you have to be practical, but I actually think that's not true, you actually have to hold to a dream... and desire is part of that dream.

I didn't come out and pay a really painful price often, to be LGBT, to not claim my sexuality at the same time. It's not all right with me to not talk about it so I don't make anybody nervous.

We're impacted by all the intersections of our identities and those then are reflected on what our choices are.

In some ways, the challenge of staying political is to stay a dreamer at the same time.

I think that white people are not seen as people with racial histories.

If you can't do anything but fight, so every single solitary thing, every single solitary day, then the privilege of dreaming becomes something that only a few people have.

No political movement can avoid the reality of desire in its midst. Every office building is full of the illicit affairs, the unwanted pregnancies, the crises that happen in human lives.

I was a commie and I fought about Marxism and class and race and it informed everything I did.

When you betray someone, First you betray to yourself who speak somewhere inside you that you are good human

Nothing is so opportune for tyrants as a people tired of its liberty.

Life is painful, nasty and short.. in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.

We shall prepare the coffee of reconciliation through the filter of justice. Through reconciliation, streams of tears will come to our eyes.

Parents have no right to impose their religion on their children... A Fundamentalist Protestant parent has no right to expect the state to support his own narrow conception of education.

Man is still an ape in that he forgets what is not ever before his eyes.

Obviously it was an out of body experience to win an Academy Award.

I hate okra and grated mountain yam for the same reason. They're both slimy.