Young black men in America have an identity ascribed to them that is a direct legacy of slavery.

The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

Think of the question of mass incarceration. Think of the coding that the Republican Party has used for years, whether they're talking about Obama or blacks or Willie Horton.

Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is.

Collective freedom provides the basic conditions for people to narrate their own lives, hold power accountable, and embrace a capacious notion of human dignity.

The present generation has been born into a throwaway society of consumers in which both goods and young people are increasingly objectified and disposable.

The ideology of hardness and cruelty runs through American culture like an electric current.

America has become amnesiac - a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated.

War is one of the nation's most honored virtues, and its militaristic values now bear down on almost every aspect of American life.

It is precisely through the indeterminate nature of history that resistance becomes possible and politics refuses any guarantees and remains open.

Under neoliberalism, culture appears to have largely abandoned its role as a site of critique.

There isa time to liveand a time to diebut never to reject the moment.

Hard work is the bridge between success and your dreams.

To attract people naturally, effortlessly, we need only follow the true prompting of our hearts.

Such misplaced faith in a boy with a murderous past and a girl with treacherous intent.

I observe to the letter all laws that make sense but combat those that are obsolete or absurd.

As a child growing up during the Korean War, I knew poverty. I studied by candlelight.

Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher.

Worship is why we are born and why we are born again.

If you're not thinking about a negative thought, your vibration is going to raise to its natural positive place.

I spent ages figuring out things like viewpoint, how you tell the story, and so on.