We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property, it doesn't leave a whole lot of time for non-market values and non-market activity so that love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts. I've never viewed them in any way as being separable.

Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings. ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind.

For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice.

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

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