I'm a Christian, but I'm not a puritan. I believe in pleasure and orgiastic pleasure has its place, intellectual pleasure has its place, social pleasure has its place, televisual pleasure has its place [in life].

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

You keep folks so intimidated. You can give them money, access, but they're still scared. And as long as you're scared, you're on the plantation.

I would want to conceive of philosophy as grounded in the very long humanist tradition that is the best of the West, which is open to the East and North and South.

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak, it means then that if you have a prophetic sensibility, you are committed to loving others and if you love others, you hate injustice.

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.