Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public

We look at the legacy of Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells and Ella Baker, Malcolm X and Martin King. We have, and part of the struggle now in the age of [Barack] Obama is how do we keep alive the legacy of Martin King?

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

We are intent on building a movement. The next step is grassroots town meetings. We must keep alive the dialogue around the covenants.

A rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it.

The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.

In the practice of radical love, you are embracing human beings across the board, but you do give a preference - very much like Jesus - to the least of these, to the weak, to the vulnerable. That includes poor whites and poor browns, as well as the poor in black ghettos.