We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.

You are in charge of your own attitude whatever others do or circumstances you face. The only person you can control is yourself...worry more about your attitude than your aptitude or lineage.

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.

So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.

Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.

[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].

You can't tell parents to teach children the value of work when we don't have jobs and the jobs we have don't pay a decent wage. You can't tell children to achieve and then let them go to broken-down schools with teachers who don't care. We need a consistency of values in our public, corporate, and private lives.