Education is soul crafting.

Like Richard Ellmann on James Joyce, Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison is in a class of its own. His masterful and magisterial book is the most powerful and profound treatment of Ellison's undeniable artistic genius, deep personal flaws, and controversial political evolution. And he reveals an Ellison unbeknownst to all of us. From now on, all serious scholarship on Ellison must begin with Rampersad's instant and inimitable classic in literary biography.

Anger can be a bitterness that devours your soul while righteous indignation is morally driven, it's ethically driven.

As long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive.

Martin Luther King was not a Marxist or a communist, but his radical love leads him to put poor and working people at the center.

I've been blessed, I think, to have tremendous joy in my life in pursuing my vocation, my calling.

what I think separates me from most philosophers probably is that I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind, I'm a jazzman in the world of ideas.