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

I think, Tom Friedman is right, and I think that we have to - we have to have a serious public dialogue to try to shift public policy in that regard.

Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was that dream? It wasn't the American Dream. It was a dream that all human beings, especially poor and working people, be treated with dignity.

To be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely - to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep on stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.

The powerful have no monopoly on greed, hatred, fear, or ignorance.

I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts. I've never viewed them in any way as being separable.

I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself.