The only countervailing force against organized money at the top, is organized people at the bottom.

If the Kingdom of God is in you, you should leave a little bit of heaven wherever you go.

I was a gangster when I was young. I had a Robin Hood mentality and tended to always want to support the weak against the strong, but sometimes it was cohesive and I really needed to fall in love with the power of education to find the right venue to express my rage. I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes.

Courage is the enabling virtue for any philosopher - for any human being, I think, in the end. Courage to think, courage to love, courage to hope.

I do believe that not just the churches but strong communities, strong trade unions, strong families can make a difference in terms of producing persons much more virtuous than what one usually finds in a gangster culture.

Going all the way back to Jeremiah Wright and Tavis Smiley and Van Jones and even Shirley Sherrod and maybe even Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel. We're going to see what his [Barack Obama] response is.

I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.