No poor, rural, weak, or black person should ever again have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, a job, or simple justice.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

What are the things that you can't see that are important? I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love...They're the guiding lights of a life.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

All I want is the same thing you want. To have a nation with a government that is as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it.

America has no functioning democracy at this moment.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life.

It's so much a part of me that it's almost hard to describe myself in the absence of [faith].

I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. (107)

I was taken in by the bravado and the sounds of Mexico... not so much the music, but the spirit.

Last night I asked my husband, 'What's your favorite sexual position?' and he said, 'Next door.'

Luck ran out, but smart was for life.

Do I take the Gospel message of reconciliation and love into the places where I live and work?

I took one piano lesson and hated it and then didn't take any piano lessons until I was 18.

There's kind of a toll you have to pay with a cat; if you don't pet her for 10 minutes she'll bother you for six hours.

The grace of God sets us free from a life of perfection, performing, and pretending.