Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.

No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.

In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, what gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, the mind annihilates and calls for more.

What we forget is that African Americans made the largest contribution to America, economically, before the Civil War of any sector of society. I read that the railroads were worth about $2 billion, but slavery was a $3 billion asset.

I was much more comfortable and a much better congressman running in a district that was 37 percent black, where I had to have a white constituency to get elected, than I would have been if I was in a 75 percent black district.

Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.