Quote collection
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"King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens."
"Christians got a lot of work to do. But, the spirit of Dorothy Day is alive. Martin Luther King is still alive. Malcolm X and the prophetic Islamic tradition is still alive. We can't lose sight of those prophetic religious folk who, even given their kin in the same tradition, says, you all are wrong on this, but we're still in the same tradition."
"We live in a predatory capitalist society in which everything is for sale. Everybody is for sale, so there is ubiquitous commodification - be it of music, food, people, or parking meters."
"I was a gangster when I was young. I had a Robin Hood mentality and tended to always want to support the weak against the strong, but sometimes it was cohesive and I really needed to fall in love with the power of education to find the right venue to express my rage. I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes."
"Greatness is telling the truth & being courageous in pursuit of justice. The worst thing you could tell young people is to be successful but become well-adjusted to an unjust status quo as opposed to being great & being maladjusted to an unjust status quo."
"It is very difficult to sustain a high-quality relationship that has the kind of mutual intensity, that has a kind of mutual respect, without putting in time."
"There's no doubt that many of the mainstream white institutions tend to be cosmetic and symbolic when it comes to including African-Americans, whereas we black folk tend to be much more sensitive about embracing others, and we have a long history of that."
"Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)"
"I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference."
"Barack Obama has domesticated the left in such a way that we feel as if we have no alternative but him...I refuse to accept that."
"The black agenda, from Frederick Douglas to Ida B. Wells to Martin King, has always been the most broad, deep, inclusive, embracing agenda of the nation."
"I believe that all of us have gangster proclivities and greedy orientations that need accountability. That's why democracies are necessary. We have to have institutions to try to curtail the use of arbitrary power so that our greedy orientations and gangster-like proclivities don't get out of hand."
"We have to be self-critical even in context that we might be critical of, even as we - our pieces appear in it."
"The interesting thing for me is, if that had been a left-wing person raising questions, [President Obama] probably would have expressed his anger. Because Obama really does get upset about progressives."
"You can't move forward until you look back."
"One of the things I love most about Martin Luther King is that he was willing to sacrifice his popularity in favor of his integrity. He was an honest man, and he would tell the truth."
"Certainly Martin Luther King, in the mainstream perception of him, had a dream. Yes, he did. But the question becomes, what was that dream? It wasn't the American Dream. It was a dream that all human beings, especially poor and working people, be treated with dignity."
"And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you."
"Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent."
"There's a certain pleasure of the life of the mind that cannot be denied. There's a certain pleasure about being around people who enact a playfulness when it comes to the world of ideas."