The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence.

You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out.

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.

Our democratic richness arrives when we're able to comprehend our collective humanity accurately.

In America, we have to learn to be patient enough to figure out what somebody is saying. Somebody might actually be saying something.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

But the myth of violent solutions as the ultimate solutions maintains itself in much of popular media.