“I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient. God is not finished with me yet.”

“Your children need your presence more than your presents.”

“I'm in show business... I want to hang out with Janet Jackson, not Jesse Jackson.”

“Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics.”

“For me, Barack Obama's election was a milestone of the most extraordinary kind. On the day he was elected I felt such hope in my heart. I thought we were seeing the beginning of a new era of equal opportunity across race and gender such as America had never known before.”

“Keep hope alive!”

“Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.”

“At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division.”

“Leadership has a harder job to do than just choose sides. It must bring sides together.”

“Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.”

“Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.”

“We must all learn a good lesson - how to live together. That is the new challenge of the new world... learning to co-exist and not co-annihilate.”

“I came to the conclusion that in order to end racial barriers, I needed to run for the office of the president and put forth an agenda of social justice and world peace. In addition, I concluded that someone needed to run and challenge the liberal orthodoxy.”

“Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.”