We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.

Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

Well, certainly one of the ironies of the success of affirmative action is that the middle class within the black community no longer lives within 'black community' by and large.

You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.

Each heart knows its own bitterness and no one else can share its joy.

One 'beautiful-mind' indeed weighs heavy over thousand creations of natureand that is why from Socrates to Kabir, all hold such great importance.

I believe God created sports for a good reason. It's recreation. It's something that we enjoy. It teaches us a lot as well... I believe God is a sports fan.

Now those memories come back to haunt me they haunt me like a curse.

If you let them kill you, they will

Look at the number of cop shows and lawyer shows and forensics shows... I think there could be room for two quite different examinations of the same political office.

If antiquity be the only test of nobility, then cheese is a very noble thing ... The lineage of cheese is demonstrably beyond all record.

For the gods, instead of what is most pleasing, will give what is most proper. Man is dearer to them than he is to himself.

King Kong, Count Dracula, and the Phantom of the Opera are just looking for love, like the rest of us.

We need to deter the Palestinians in any way we can.