You cannot give up - you have to be persistent and keep pushing, and press on.

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.

We have come a long way in America because of Martin Luther King, Jr. He led a disciplined, nonviolent revolution under the rule of law, a revolution of values, a revolution of ideas. We've come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself.

What has been doing in the last week, attacking Hollywood actresses [Meryl Streep] for criticizing him, I mean what would is this guy [Donald Trump] living in?

You cannot be afraid to speak up and speak out for what you believe. You have to have courage, raw courage.

I think putting the United States down across the world is not something that a responsible person does.

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"