Reelection ought not to be the primary preoccupation of any politician. It ought to be standing up for truth and justice.

I must feel the fire of my soul so my intellectual blues can set others on fire.

If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf.

When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots. They can't get away with their abuse. They can't get away with subjection. They can't get away with subjugation. They can't get away with exploitation. They can't get away with domination. It takes courage for folk to stand up.

It would just be nice if we had leaders in Washington who could unequivocally take a stand on behalf of democratic movements in other parts of the world. And even this is true for even Brother Barack Obama.

It's true that you might be socially isolated because you're reading in the library, at home and so on, but you're intensely alive. In fact you're much more alive than these folk walking the streets of New York in crowds, with no intellectual interrogation and questioning going at all.

I think nonviolence and the mediation of conflict by means of respecting civility must be promoted. But being the kind of beings we [peoplep] are - wrestling with greed, and wrestling with fears and security, anxieties, wrestling with hatred that's shot through all of us - wars are here to stay.