I love the academy in terms of the life of the mind and the world of ideas. I also love the streets. I love the churches and mosques and synagogues. I love the trade union centers. I love the community centers. I speak regularly at prisons and so forth.

There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.

Does he have a double standard for black critics as opposed to white critics?

You can't move forward until you look back.

We've got the wrong vision, the wrong values, the wrong priority, and as the great prophetic figure Marian Edelman Wright puts it, we have been AWOL when it comes to poor people and poor children.

One is that I am a regular, everyday person, you know what I mean. I feel that wherever I am, I really am.

confining life to an eternal present is an insidious form of soul murder