"To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people."

"I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine."

"The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior."

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

"I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government."

"The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."

"Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe."

"The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious."