To love country means to rise above I am because I am. It is to recognize that I am because we are.

True patriots measure themselves not by personal wealth or power but by the degree to which they contribute to the community.

The next time someone uses denial of citizenship as a weapon or brandishes the special status conferred upon him by the accident of birth, ask him this: What have you done lately to earn it?

Today's multiracial Americans are at greater liberty to choose how they'd like to be seen, and under less pressure to pass for white.

We're all better off...when we're all better off.

The Boomers have modeled a set of bad habits, and one grand gesture is not going to unwind all those bad habits.

Identity in America is complicated but it's also simple: it's about whom you identify with and who identifies with you.

As it stands now, those of us who are lucky enough to be citizens by birth don't have to do much. Very little is asked of us.

Throughout this country's history there have of course been systematic efforts to create an official underclass.

To be sure, the United States has profound problems, not least our faltering educational and physical infrastructure.

Society becomes how you behave.

If you let your man-made actions to be more frequent than your man-said words you will travail with praise in man-win visions. Do more, say less, win big.

Nothing is more foreign than the world of one's childhood when one has truly left it.

The space where I write is in my head, I suppose.

It was all in His hands now - as it had always been.

When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.

Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places.

There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.

This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy.

I love you,' Rachael said. 'If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I'd score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.

So you are the people tearing down the Brazilian rainforest and breeding cattle.