Don't assume a door is closed; push on it. Don't assume if it was closed yesterday that it is closed today. Don't ever stop learning and improving your mind. If you do, you're going to be left behind.

I think it is important that people who are perceived as liberals not be afraid of talking about moral and community values.

[Rosa Louise] Parks used to say, "Everybody looks at me because I sat down once in Montgomery, but the real hero is a woman named Septima Clark."She created the Citizenship Schools [where civil-rights activists taught basic literacy and political education classes].

If things are too easy, life is a whole lot less interesting.

It's deeply rooted in the American psyche. Black men have always been viewed as the other, which leads to a different application of the laws. The current laws are an obscenity. More black men are locked up for using pot than white folk are for far more serious crimes.

It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list.

There were these great women in Montgomery, [Rosa Louise] Parks was among them. Jo Ann Robinson [who organized the bus boycott] was among them. It's always these ordinary women and men of grace who have been waiting and seething and planning to change things that are unjust that bring movement.