Understand and be confident that each of us can make a difference by caring and acting in small as well as big ways.

God, please help us remember that all the darkness in the world cannot snuff out the light of one little candle. Help us to keep lighting our little candles until a mighty torch of justice sweeps our nation and the world.

Education is a precondition to survival in America today.

We have the capacity to make sure that every mother has pre-natal care. Yet, we don't do it. What is it about America? It says we don't value children and families. We are hypocrites.

Parents have become so convinced that educators know what is best for their children that they forget that they themselves are really the experts.

The civil-rights movement was completely impossible to achieve. But look at what ordinary people were able to do because they were willing to sacrifice their lives to stay with it. They didn't expect a political process to respond to them. They made the political process respond to them. To say "It's so bad I won't bother" is to give up on your children and give up on your future.

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.