Life is such a mysterious thing that you are up one day; you are down the next day. A lot of the homeless brothers and sisters who were a success ten years ago, they are now on the street. Maybe ten years later they will be a success, but the crucial question is what is the quality of their life.

Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)

My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.

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

Homophobia is very, very difficult to root out, to extricate. That's why we have to bear witness. That's why we have to be so public about it, and that's why we can't just play footsie with it.

There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference.

Try to just be true to ourselves, whoever we are, but willing to grow, even as we're true to ourselves.