My prayer is that what we have gone through [World War One] will startle the world into some new realization of the sanctity of life, animal as well as human.
I could pull all kinds of games on my mother. I couldn't pull any games on my father.
I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.
I question the political judgement of those who would have the nerve to paint Christ white with his obvious African nose, lips and wooly hair.
Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.
Each generation must assume the responsibility of securing their manhood, their womanhood, the definition of their being on earth that in the final analysis is nationhood.
To hold a people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.
When I first arrived to Congress in 1975, I would spend several hours every week with Republicans - having lunch, drinking a beer. But by the time I left last year, that was a rarity. Every moment of free time is eaten up by fundraising. And the advent of all these groups that can threaten passage of this or that with an avalanche of money or a primary opponent has poisoned our politics.
My grandfather would live to see his children become doctors and ministers, accounts and professors.
I'm a thirty-something gay man with a dodgy heart. I sell books for a living. Who wants to read about that?
I came out singing, the doctor slapped me on the head, and I started singing.