I think now, with our technology, our capacity to grow food, our ability to stop raping the Earth and destroying the ecology and killing off fellow creatures, we have a chance to bring a new harmony and a new path to human development.

America can no longer afford to be as arrogant as we've been. We can no longer exempt ourselves from the global family of concern.

There's an old saying in the days of slavery, there are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master to exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. That gave you privilege. Colin Powell is permitted to come into the house of the master, as long as he will serve the master according to the master's dictates. Now, when Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture.

Terrorism is in many, many ways the final utterance of voices unheard.

Carmen Jones was the first all-Negro film that became a great box-office success. It established the fact that pictures with Negro artists, pictures dealing with the folklore of Negro life, were commercially feasible. This was a sign of growth that had occurred in the United States and throughout the world.

To really know what progress we’re making for children, we have to know how many children we have to begin with. The simple act of counting is an expression of a country’s intent to take care of its people.

Why are we mute? Where are our leaders, our legislators? Where is the church?