I don't care what my children choose to do professionally, just as long as within their choices they understand they've got to give something back.

Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.

Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.

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.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.