How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?

You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.

A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.

I think that rebellions arise out of anger, and they're very short-lived. And a revolution has some sense of a long time frame, millions of years that we've been evolving on this planet.

I think most people do not imagine how things can change. In Detroit, there are community gardens that are only an indication that the country is coming back to the city. And that is something that actually is necessary to stop the real imminent danger of the extermination of our planet.

Nonviolence is based on recognizing that all of us are human beings. And at a certain point we begin to learn that you don't gather very much by making enemies out of people and not recognizing their humanity.

The image of blacks usually is one of people who are suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty. The idea of them as agents and activists - as starting revolutions - does not exist in most people's minds. And I think it's very, very important that folks understand how much America was founded on the enslavement of blacks, and how the resistance of blacks to that enslavement has been the spark plug for so many important developments.