We all have a responsibility to create a just society

You ultimately judge the civility of a society not by how it treats the rich, the powerful, the protected and the highly esteemed, but by how it treats the poor, the disfavored and the disadvantaged.

We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.

You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.

Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.

The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.

Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.

We live in a country that talks about being the home of the brave and the land of the free, and we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.

I don't think there's been a time in American history with more innocent people in prison.

Always do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing

The great hope we find in the Christian faith is that God is not us.

I was nothing more to him than a prison sentence, trapping him inside my walls and persecuting him for a crime he was tricked into committing.

No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors… This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

Understanding requires a person’s ability to grasp or comprehend information.

It is values that dictate your responses.

We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.

Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

You should smile more often.' 'Can't.' He grunted as he opened her shirt to expose her chest. 'My face might freeze like that.

No matter how you rearrange President Obama's inner circle, it still looks, smells and tastes like a rotten Chicago deep-dish pizza.

Drop dead-but first get permit