In trying to make a big difference, don't ignore the small daily differences we can make.

Unless children have strong education and strong families and strong communities and decent housing, it's not enough to go sit in at a lunch counter.

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.

Semi-automatic weapons have no socially redeeming purpose.

I worry about the kids who have too much. As a parent living in a so-called good neighborhood with children who went to private high school, I found myself spending much time in parent groups worrying about alcohol, unsupervised parties, and parents not being parents.

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back - but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

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.