Fantasies are real. They have effects on your soul, even though, as I was too young to really step forward.

You have to have a habitual vision of greatness ... you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity ... believe in fact that living is connected to giving.

I have some notions that have people conceiving of themselves as capable of changing the world. That's why, for me, the issues of self-love, self-respect and self-regard are preconditions for human agency and especially black agency, given the fact that we have been and are such a hated and despised people.

To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

You're trying to just leave the world a little better.

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak.

I was blessed to be part of a commercial, pushing for this energy bill, but we've been unsuccessful.