I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black?

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.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

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.

The amount of time spent doing something is what adds value to it

It seems to me if I were young and in love I should never deem a man of ordinary caliber worthy of my devotion.

No one is really miserable who has not tried to cheapen life.

The photograph that discovers and uncovers the world is harder to simulate than an image that simply illustrates one's ideas about it.

Perhaps the most important thing I can tell you about equipment is to experiment and keep an open mind.

You can choose to be peaceful right here and now ... it has nothing to do with what other people do or think.

A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.

I'm from durable stock. I'm made to work. I'm Irish.

It could all be so simple, but you'd rather make it hard, lovin you is like a battle, and we both end up with scars, tell me who i have to be, to get some reciprocity.

We should have stayed on the moon. We should have made moon the base, instead of building space stations, which are fragile and which fly apart.