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.

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.

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.

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

It's better to swim in the sea belowThan to swing in the air and feed the crow, Says jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.

You broke the chain, Luna. Of all his victims, you were the only one that ever walked away and he hasn’t forgotten.

Or maybe I’d lost my soul already. I doubted God let someone like me keep any gift from him. It was highly likely I’d been born without one.

If you are mindful in your work, if you put your best effort into it, then something comes back to you.

I had to steal to survive.

Legislation has been and is still directed towards the protection of wealth, rather than towards the far more important interests of labor on which everything of value to mankind depends.

WE all have to play as a team to make the world a better place

Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; a sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes.

Advertising is a tax for having an unremarkable product

The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border of Afghanistan, I wrote to President Jimmy Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.