In politics, there are no friends.

[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].

Learn to be quiet enough to hear the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in others.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

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

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.

You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.