I have no doubt that there will continue to be bumps, some serious crises indeed in our relationship with China.... Neither membership in the WTO nor normalized trade relations with the United States will magically impose the rule of law on China or institute deep-seeded respect for human rights. But it certainly has potential to advance those purposes.

...there is simply nothing so important to a people and its government as how many of them there are, whether their number is growing or declining, how they are distributed as between different ages, sexes, and different social classes and racial and ethnic groups, and again, which way these numbers are moving.

When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.

Secrecy is for losers.

To strip our past of glory is no great loss, but to deny it honor is devastating.

At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family.