Humanitarian appeals always help. They penetrate deeper than political tradeoffs.

There was a direct jobs program from the Rooselvelt administration in the 1930s. The Justice Department has set up a task force to investigate the banks and the mortgage crisis but that's a little too late. Whenever they report they will report the obvious. It will be too late to impact the people who need the help the most.

The only justification we have to look down on someone is because we are about to pick him up.

My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected and the despised.

Urban America has been redlined. Government has not offered tax incentives for investment, as it has in a dozen foreign markets. Banks have redlined it. Industries have moved out, they've redlined it. Clearly, to break up the redlining process, there must be incentives to green-line with hedges against risk.

From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.

The only justification for ever looking down on somebody is to pick them up.