I would say to a young person: continue to study. Study what is taking place in your community, in your neighborhood, maybe at your school.

Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

I think [James Comey] should take a hard look at what he has done. And I think it would not be a bad thing for the American people if he did step down.

The last thing we want is a monolithic viewpoint where six people are standing before a president saying the same thing over and over again.

I was so inspired by Dr. King that in 1956 with my brothers and sisters and first cousins, I was only 16 years old, we went down to the public library trying to check out some books and we were told by the librarian that the library was for whites only and not for colors! It was a public library! I never went back to that public library until July 5th, 1998, by this time I'm in the Congress, for a book signing of my book "Walking with the Wind"

You have to have the capacity and the ability to take what people did, and how they did it, and forgive them and move on.

Ornette Coleman is doing the only really new thing in jazz since the innovations in the mid-forties of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and those of Thelonious Monk