Don't feel entitled to anything you didn't sweat and struggle for.

The literacy level at Mississippi prisons? Fifth grade. Can't read, what are you going to do? If you've got a conviction rap, what are you going to do? It's a real crisis.

It never occurred to me that I was not going to challenge segregation.

Education remains one of the black community's most enduring values. It is sustained by the belief that freedom and education go hand in hand, that learning and training are essential to economic quality and independence.

If it's wrong for 13-year-old inner-city girls to have babies without the benefit of marriage, it's wrong for rich celebrities, and we ought to stop putting them on the cover of People magazine.

You didn't have a choice about the parents you inherited, but you do have a choice about the kind of parent you will be.

Failure is just another way to learn how to do something right.