If the times aren't ripe, you have to ripen the times.

We have to realize we are building a movement.

When you're a black woman, you seldom get to do what you just want to do; you always do what you have to do.

I am the product of many whose lives have touched mine, from the famous, distinguished, and powerful to the little known and the poor.

My mother helped me understand how not to show off what I knew, but how to use it so that others might benefit.

We've got to work to save our children and do it with full respect for the fact that if we do not, no one else is going to do it.

Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together.