As a matter of fact, compromise is what oppression feeds on.

Each and every one of you has the power, the will and the capacity to make a difference in the world in which you live in

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.

In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.

I am who I am despite what America has put before me. I am who I am despite the obstacles that we have all faced based upon race and based upon social and spiritual humiliation.

You can cage the singer but not the song.

Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.

Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.

These children and their parents know that getting an education is not only their right, but a passport to a better future - for the children and for the country.

We've come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.

Where is the raised voice of black America? Why are we mute?

With greater confidence in yourself and your abilities, you will set bigger goals, make bigger plans and commit yourself to achieving objectives that today you only dream about.

I'm the only person in the entire world who has never see 'Dawson's Creek.

It's interesting to be playing a father who's on the other side because that's not my world and not where I came from.

Hunger is the best sauce in the world.

If you cannot feed one hundred hungry people, then just feed one really well.

I think London's sexy because it's so full of eccentrics.

And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul.

It takes more than one person to bring about peace - it takes all of us.

I want everyone to tell me the truth, even if it costs him his job.

... sometimes I can feel it, the way we are pouring slowly toward a curve and around it through something dark and soft, and we are bound to each other.