“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

“The point I was making was not that Grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person…”

“Words do inspire. ”

“It’s the founding ideals that the flag draped over my father’s coffin stand for." Truth: His father was buried in Kenya, never served in the U.S. military. Which flag draped his father’s coffin? And what ideals does the flag that draped his father’s coffin in Kenya stand for?”

“I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

“Di Indonesia, kekuasaan diperlihatkan secara terang-terangan, tidak pandang bulu, terbuka, selalu segar dalam ingatan.”

“Our stories may be singular, but our destination is shared.”

“America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.” 

“I've got daughters. Nine years old and six years old. First of all, I'm gonna teach them about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them PUNISHED with a baby.”

“Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.”

“This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man's power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man.”

“Well, amigo … you can talk all you want about saving the world, but this city tends to eat away at such noble sentiments.”

“We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist. ”

“Our values call upon us to care about people we'll never meet.”

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”