If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.

Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.

Progress comes from caring more about what needs to be done than about who gets the credit

Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together.

When you're a black woman, you seldom get to do what you just want to do; you always do what you have to do.

Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop.

We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it.

There is no contradiction between effective law enforcement and respect for civil and human rights.

My mother helped me understand how not to show off what I knew, but how to use it so that others might benefit.

No one will do for you what you need to do for yourself. We cannot afford to be separate. We have to see that all of us are in the same boat.

If you worry about who is going to get credit, you don't get much work done.

People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.

You have this and this, soon it will come and this and you are still at this level of knowledge... so poor for you!

The idea of saving anything was folly, a life especially. No life had been truly saved, not in the history of mankind. They were merely prolonged. Everything comes to an end.

The important thing is not that we can live on hope alone but that life is not worth living without it.

When I think back kind of on starting my career, the last place I thought I would be would be spending a lot of time in Brooklyn.

People are voting for the kind of country they want to live in, and there are different views about what kind of country we should have.

There are many different rivers that lead into despair: there's poverty; there's political repression; there's gender apartheid - there's a sense of culture loss; there's religious fanaticism.

Screenwriting is like ironing. You move forward a little bit and go back and smooth things out.

To plant trees is to give body and life to one's dreams of a better world.

Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.