Whites have more than eleven times the net worth or wealth of African Americans. They make greater salaries. Our unemployment rate is twice theirs. You look at the prison system and who that's chewing up.

I never met a white person till I was a grown man. I never went to school with a white till I was twenty-six years old, at Harvard Law School. The insult of segregation was searing and unforgettable. It has left a great scar, and will be with me for the rest of my life.

I've always thought I had pretty good instincts for people. There is a short list of people I've worked with over my career with whom I've not been able to distinguish easily between the public persona and the real private person.

I got a chance to be in a society where the barriers between classes - social and economic - are not insuperable, where money is not everything all the time.

For anyone who is not white in America, the affronts are virtually across the board.

We all have to die, and I preferred to have just one death. It seems to me that to suffer insult without response is to die many deaths.

Democracy requires that if you who don't like the outcome of elections you have to tolerate it and then pursue your interest the next time around.