“They’ve just memorized that stupid fact sheet. And we thought, gosh do we sound that good? It didn’t seem possible. But that was my introduction to politics.”

After I had known [Barack Obama] for a while, I remember saying to my partner, “You know, this guy is really ambitious, I think he wants to be Mayor of Chicago.” That was the limit of my imagination.

I get up every morning and think, today I’m going to make a difference. Today I’m going to end capitalism. Today I’m going to make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed but I’m back to work tomorrow, and that’s the only way you can do it.

Beginning to dismantle the Pentagon would save $1 trillion a year – a small government proposal if ever there was one.

It was Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Wendell Phillips – these were the people who made abolition real. Now, none of you guys is in favor of slavery, right?

One of the things that happened that I think is noteworthy, my parents were pretty tolerant people given their position in society.

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

The world spends two trillion dollars a year on military, and of that two trillion the United States spends one trillion. We have a bigger military than the rest of the world put together. We have 150 foreign military bases.

If you read Martin Luther King speeches and sermons in the last two years of his life – you might want to – –when I read these to my students, they think it’s Malcom X because it’s so radical.

There was a sense of palpable relief that George [W.] Bush was leaving and that the Republicans had slipped back and that was a wonderful feeling.

Where’s the activism? Nobody knows. And anyone who thinks they know, like Todd Gitlin, has their head up their ass. Nobody knows.

Every relationship is an experiment and what one learns from it is so fascinating.

When [my dad] was at the University of Michigan, my mom was a social-worker. As he rose, he voted for [Adlai] Stevenson initially. Then he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. Then he kept voting Republican until he voted for Barack Obama.

Can we imagine a different world? I can. That’s a world where work is rational, it’s in the common good, and we’re actually producing real things rather than spinning our wheels in dreams of consumer heaven.

It’s not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it’s the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

I don’t regret setting bombs.

[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.

My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.

Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.

Can’t Stop Dancing’ is this other side of me that I was ready to introduce to my fans, which is like, after you hang out with me, you start to see that I can be chilled and relaxed, and I’m a little bit more mature for my age.

Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair.

If we wait till we run no risk, the gospel will never be introduced into the interior.

My manager introduced me to the ‘Rise to Honor’ team. I was curious about what it took to be involved in video games, a completely new form of entertainment to me.

Marvin Gaye is an inspiration to me. He was one of the first Motown musicians that my mom and dad introduced me to, and I always thought it would be a good idea if I was ever an artist, and now I am, to make a record called ‘Marvin Gaye.’

America needs to follow the policies it has introduced in Germany. We have to go through a certain de-Nazification process.