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

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.

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.

The nativism behind the push to repeal or amend the Fourteenth is ugly and obvious.

Beware how you take away hope from another human being

We are relentless. We don't compromise grace. But when we hunt, we're vicious.

In the wilderness, we experience the faithfulness of God.

A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.

This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun, Those skies, thro' which it rolls, must all have end. What then is man? The smallest part of nothing.

I never say anything of a man that I have the smallest scruple of saying to him.

It is unmistakable madness to live in poverty only to die rich.

It's easy to endure adversity -- if it happens to someone else.

Lean too much upon the approval of people, and it becomes a bed of thorns.

A racist is a man who believes in history, genetics, and his eyes!