“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”

“This is the moment we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.”

“What I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children — all of our children — a better world. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”

“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.”

“And that, I suppose, is what I'd been trying to tell my mother that day: that her faith in justice and rationality was misplaced, that we couldn't overcome after all, that all the education and good intentions in the world couldn't help you plug up the holes in the universe or give you the power to change its blind, mindless course.”

“of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went”

“Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

“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.”

“I've been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career.”

“We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”

“Elle était jolie, Joyce, avec ses yeux verts, sa peau de miel et sa moue boudeuse. (...) Un jour je lui demandais si elle allait à la réunion de l'Association des étudiants noirs. Elle me lança un drôle de regard, puis elle secoua la tête (...): — Je ne suis pas noire, me répondit-elle. Je suis multiraciale. (...) Pourquoi voudrais-tu que je choisisse entre [mon père italien et ma mère africaine-indienne] ? (...) Ce ne sont pas les Blancs qui veulent me faire choisir, (...) ce sont les Noirs.”

“I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." --at a campaign event in Beaverton, Oregon” 

“Churches won't work with you, though, just out of the goodness of their hearts. They'll talk a good game-a sermon on Sunday, maybe, or a special offering for the homeless. But if push comes to show, they won't really move unless you can show them how it'll help them pay their heating bill.”

“Once I found an issue enough people cared about, I could take them into action. With enough actions, I could start to build power

“I was impatient in those days, busy with work and unrealized plans, and prone to see other people as unnecessary distractions.”