I think you can find some rationales for that if we look at the background out of which he came. Martin [Luther King] had come out of a highly competitive, black, middle-class background.

In order to see where we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been.

Oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.

I have always thought that what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others.

Until the killing of black men, black mothers' sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother's sons, we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.

Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

Give light, and people will find the way...

I didn't break the rules, but I challenged the rules.

My theory is, strong people don't need strong leaders.

One of the things that has to be faced is the process of waiting to change the system, how much we have got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

None meet life honestly and few heroically.

There is one river of Truth which receives tributaries from every side.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

Think pink, but don't wear it.

I've been overwhelmed; I was a single mother for a time.

The only shortage we have today is the shortage we have between our own two ears.

Life is going forth; death is returning home.

What I find most disturbing about Valentine's Day is, look, I get that you have to have a holiday of love, but in the height of flu season, it makes no sense.

Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.