You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it.
Fire really means a certain kind of burning in the soul that one can no longer tolerate when one is pushed against a wall.
There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference.
It's never a question of skin pigmentation. It's never a question of just culture or sexual orientation or civilization. It's what kind of human being you're going to choose to be from your mama's womb to the tomb and what kind of legacy will you leave.
Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.
There is something about boldness and fearlessness and being free enough to speak what is on one's mind that warrants freedom.
Neofascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big corporations, tied to xenophobic scapegoating of the vulnerable, like Mexicans and Muslims and women and black folk, and militaristic policies abroad, with strongman, charismatic, autocratic personality, and that's what Donald Trump is.
I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.
Martin Luther King Jr. was not just a man of peace. He was a radical pacifist, and so he was against war across the board.
My dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination.
Part of the popularity with Louis Farrakhan has less to do with the content of his message and more to do with the form that he portrays himself - as being a free black person who speaks what is on his mind with boldness and fearlessness. Who is willing to pay the consequences.
I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'
A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all.
Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse.
We had a much deeper sense of community in '67 than we do in '97. This is important to say that not in a nostalgic way because it's not as if '67 was a time when things were so good.
The problem is we need much more moral content.
We have a market-driven society so obsessed with buying and selling and obsessed with power and pleasure and property.
I'm against genocide. I'm against fascism. I'm willing to fight against them so that, in that sense, I think one can still be committed to justice and committed to peace but recognize the circumstances under which one does have to fight.
Now, myself, I'm not a pacifist at all. I believe in just war. I would have joined the spirit of the nation to fight against apartheid.
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.
