"I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti."

"The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up."

"America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system."

"Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice."

"Television of course actually started in Britain in 1936, and it was a monopoly, and there was only one broadcaster and it operated on a license which is not the same as a government grant."

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both."

"At his best, man is the noblest of all animals separated from law and justice he is the worst."

"Great leaders cultivate leaders, not merely followers. For where clarity resides, peace inevitably follows."