The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

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 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.

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

I believe in you, Sonya. You're a girl who can do impossible things. No one like you has walked this world. I regret not realizing that sooner.

The Self, when finite, is Human and when infinite, is God.

Even though I don't personally believe in the Lord, I try to behave as though He was watching.

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.

Oh I do want that thing, that oneness of movement that will catch the thing up into one movement and sing - harmony of life.

The first Matrix genius, the second one, what's up with the dancing? I haven't even seen the third one.

I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.

Respect yourself. Try to remember that not everything in life can be perfect. You will make mistakes. That's inevitable. But you are not ugly. You will only be ugly when you behave in an ugly way.

If an artist wants to work with me because they feel I've made some credible albums and there've been things that are long-lasting, it's because those artists took the time and we built an idea.

A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistic philistines