My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

Everybody’s worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there’s a really easy way: stop participating in it.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

My protest about the post exchange seating bore some results. More seats were allocated for blacks, but there were still separate sections for blacks and for whites. At least I had made my men realize that something could be accomplished by speaking out, and I hoped they would be less resigned to unjust conditions.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

One of the triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement is that when you travel through the South today, you do not feel overwhelmed by a residue of grievance and hate.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

It’s empowering to know I am doing something, I am taking a stand, I am disrupting.

If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or ‚our‘ country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits where I have not shared and probably will not share.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Every once in a while, I get mad. ‚The Lorax‘ came out of my being angry. The ecology books I’d read were dull… In ‚The Lorax,‘ I was out to attack what I think are evil things and let the chips fall where they might.

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

There is no question that liberals do an impressive job of expressing concern for blacks. But do the intentions expressed in their words match the actual consequences of their deeds?

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?‘

I like Italian movies. I was frequently there in the ’60s, in Rome and the vicinity. It was a great period in life. I was very influenced by their stuff.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

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

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like – full of cruelty and hypocrisy.

I am such a political person.

I think I’m one of the most patriotic people that I’ve ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way – not by donations; I work at it.

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.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

Counsel with your parents is a privilege at any age.

My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you’ll see you had to be sharp onstage.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

For years, decades, the system has taught us to stay quiet. They’ve made us believe that those who take to the streets to speak up are crazy, criminals, troublemakers.

I do not deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.

My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression – thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

Particularly conservative Christians, I was very angry that they were not involved more in the AIDS emergency.

I liberate minds with my music. That’s more important than liberating a few people from apartheid or whatever.

I don’t believe in nepotism. I don’t much like the idea of parents who interfere.

The ‚peace movement‘ exists only in the fantasies of the paranoid.

My message to all the activists is to just keep going, and I know it really may seem impossible and hopeless sometimes – it always does – so you just have to keep going because if you try hard enough and long enough you will make a difference.

Print some money and give it to us for the rain forests.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.

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

To shake your rump is to be environmentally aware.

By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.

One of the problems of organizing in the North, in the rich countries, is that people tend to think – even the activists – that instant gratification is required. You constantly hear: ‚Look I went to a demonstration, and we didn’t stop the war so what’s the use of doing it again?‘

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.