You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.

When children attend schools that place a greater value on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development, they are attending prep schools for prison.

We are never assured of justice without a fight.

I'm thinking about some developments say in the 80s when the anti-apartheid movement began to claim more support and strength within the US. Black trade unionists played a really important role in developing this US anti-apartheid movement.

I think we need to insist on a certain responsibility, which people have - particularly those who have made it into the ranks of the middle class because as [ Martin Luther] King said many years ago in a sense they have climbed out of the masses on the shoulders of their sisters and brothers and therefore, they do have some responsibility.

We live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia.

The process of empowerment cannot be simplistically defined in accordance with our own particular class interests. We must learn to lift as we climb.