One out of every eight prisoners in the world is an African American. We are warehousing people as a profit to shareholders or for benefits to communities that get to host federal prisons. It is modern slavery.

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.

Condelleza Rice and Colin Powell are both dangerous people. What they did in Haiti [2004 U.S.-backed coup that ousted democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide] is a good measure of it. They destroyed a democracy. They squelched loans that had been approved by the Inter-American Development Bank. They did everything behind the scenes, including arming the thugs that came to overrun the country. They're frauds.

I'm aware that because America is so powerful - with its tentacles reaching out to the world - one doesn't escape it by leaving. This is the most dangerous and disturbing time in my life.

I can't think of a more mediocre human talent than George Bush. He obviously is a product of family advantage, and he's the worst American President of all time.

I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied.

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.