"I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...' - and then I used to say 'golf,' but Tiger took over golf! - 'and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades.'"

"My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy in Piedmont, W.Va., and his name was Skip. They called him Big Skip, and I was Little Skip."

"But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example."

"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."

"It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess."

"The darkest nights often reveal that every failure is just a stepping stone to greatness."

"The only limit to human potential is the simplest acts of love resonate the loudest."

"Faith is to believe what you do not see the reward of this faith is to see what you believe."