“The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.”

Perhaps some are confused because they have stereotypes of how blacks should be and I respectfully decline, as I did in my youth, to sacrifice who I am for who they think I should be.

You have a number of choices. You could continue to always fight against people who are really distractions. They’re people in the cheap seats of life. Or you can do what you went there to do.

You didn’t think of angels as white or black. They were angels.

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.

I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system.

I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today’s decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.

The courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior. The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

When you look at where the real problems are among minorities in our society, particularly blacks, it’s at the bottom. It’s the people who are in school systems that don’t educate, neighborhoods where there is a lot of crime, drugs, the whole bit.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.

I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response, in responding to the misfortune, you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on, or to do better.

And I don’t think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there’s another set of moral codes, but I don’t think government has a role.

Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy.

Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

And I can’t die easy thinking maybe the menfolks white or black is making a spit cup out of you. Have some sympathy for me. Put me down easy, Janie, I’m a cracked plate.

Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it’s some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don’t know nothin’ but what we see.

Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.

I have black friends, but I don’t just hang out with black kids. I might pull up with Indian kids, white kids, black kids, whatever.

Jealousy is perhaps the most involuntary of all strong emotions. It steals consciousness, it lies deeper than thought. It is always there, like a blackness in the eye, it discolours the world.

I used to get letters saying, ‘I didn’t know black children and white children were the same.’

How many thick black women are there singing whatever I’m singing, surrounded by rappers, but also from the suburbs? I can’t really judge someone else for judging me!