I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.

I still think in this country, and this might surprise you, the one thing that George Bush said as president that I do agree with, I love that phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

I think, for most of us is that once you get to a certain place in your career you're not having to elbow and knock people around and audition for parts.

Don't envy someone else's gift. Discover your own.

I think that what started out as a European Union originally was probably a really wonderful and world-changing idea, the idea of a kind of cooperation and interdependence between countries. But the idea that individualization would work on common ground, not on conflict, not against each other, but to find how each benefitted from the other I thought was an incredibly hopeful and positive possibility.

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.