June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

I married my best friend that happens to be a girl.

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

You have to look for teachers. If you want to be a mechanic, go hang out with mechanics.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

I have certain guys who I looked up to. Jordan, Kobe, those guys. Passing that on to doing my part to kind of keep that influence of basketball where it should be is kind of why I play the game.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

The best thing about my protest has been to see how more and more people have been coming and getting involved.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

Do your job. Do it the best you can. Do it right, because somebody, sometimes your best friend, is waiting for you to screw up so she can take your place.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

The ‚anti-globalisation movement‘ is the most significant proponent of globalisation – but in the interests of people, not concentrations of state-private power.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

You have young men of color in many communities who are more likely to end up in jail or in the criminal justice system than they are in a good job or in college. And, you know, part of my job, that I can do, I think, without any potential conflicts, is to get at those root causes.

During the 60’s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‚I used everything you gave me‘.

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.

There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.

The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

We can no longer save the world by playing by the rules.

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

It is better to be deceived by one’s friends than to deceive them.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Confidentially, the type of male I find most enjoyable for a friend is one who has enough fire and assurance to speak up for his convictions.

I desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end… I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left, and that friend shall be down inside of me.

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Civil disobedience’s main goal typically is to try to arouse and inspire others to join and do something. Well, sometimes that is a good tactic, sometimes not.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn’t say I lived in a ghetto; I’d say I lived in the ‚hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.

The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

I am such a political person.

Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.

I want to be remembered as iconic and different.

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

I think if we go back and check our record, the Negro has proven beyond a doubt that we have been more than patient in seeking our rights as American citizens.

The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

We must make it clear that a platform of ‚I hate gay men and women‘ is not a way to become president of the United States.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‚I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,‘ and so forth, I switch off quite early.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.