Lincoln had a tremendous capacity for personal growth - more than any other American President.

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.

Authors like cats because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures, and cats like authors for the same reasons.

I knew what he felt. The huge buoyant air sack of love that filled his body had just exploded and the collapse was devastating.

I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.

Perhaps many of the perplexing problems of the new music could be put into a new light if we were to reintroduce the ancient idea of music being a reflection of nature.

Unfitness for war is unfitness for existence.

Sometimes my poetry is an attempt to keep off existential terror; sometimes it is a grappling with philosophical problems; sometimes just fun.

The furnace which melts gold, also hardens clay. Before blaming thy fate, therefore, find whether thou art gold or clay.

Ive read an awful lot of books, Ive read alot of awful books

The purpose of information is not knowledge. It is being able to take the right action.

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments.