Our dreams must be stronger than our memories. We must be pulled by our dreams, rater than pushed by our memories.

Politicians refuse to modernize schools, they cut out midnight basketball, but build all these new jails. First class jails, second class schools. This is zero tolerance.

There is no power in cynicism. There is no forward thrust in cynicism.

The fact is in a city like Chicago, for example, unemployment in the black community is around 20 percent for adults, 35 percent for youth, they bail out the banks, public schools, there is a deep divide. We need a plan for reconstruction and redevelopment and I hope that - police are the gatekeepers but behind that gate are these problems of disparities and injustice.

Our flag is read, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbown-red, yellow, brown, black and white - and we're all precious in God's sight.

When we were hit on 9/11 it took us a few weeks to get the coalition together because [George] Bush had come in with a kind of narrow ideology, looking at the world, I'd say, through a keyhole and not through a door.

The white Christian church never raised to the heights of Christ. It stayed within the limit of culture.