To sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough. Freedom must be actualized in history by oppressed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyze the world for the purpose of changing it.

Black churches are very powerful forces in the African American community and always have been. Because religion has been that one place where you have an imagination that no one can control. And so, as long as you know that you are a human being and nobody can take that away from you, then God is that reality in your life that enables you to know that.

Black racism is a myth created by whites to ease their guilt feelings. As long as whites can be assured that blacks are racists, they can find reasons to justify their own oppression of’ black people.

The truth about injustice always sounds outrageous.

While the rich reap most of the benefits of technological development, the poor bear an unequal burden of dealing with the consequences of the resulting increased pollution. The poor continue to live in greatest proximity to the sources of pollution, the infrastructure and machinery of industry. They work in the most polluted and physically dangerous workplaces. And these same individuals, living and working closest to the sources of environmental catastrophe, are also the ones most lacking decent health care.

The acid test of any truth is found in whether it aids victims in their struggle to overcome victimisation.

If we save the planet and have a society of inequality, we wouldn't have saved much.