My ministry's always been one of social activism. I think a responsible minister must be at some levels involved in the social order.

We have defeated Jim Crow, but now we have to deal with his son, James Crow Jr., esquire.

Who defines terrorists? Today's terrorist is tomorrow's friend.

I do believe the Democratic party has moved far to the right. I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes.

Bill Clinton strikes me as the kind of guy who goes wherever the polls lead him, rather than leading the polls.

Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance.

Dr. King's general principles are universal. But the things he confronted took place in another era.

During my 2004 presidential campaign, I was fond of saying that it was high time for the Christian right to meet the right Christians.

Evangelicals catapulted George W. Bush back to the White House.

How do you make things fair?

I grew up in the 1950s and '60s, when it was almost a holiday when a black act would go on Ed Sullivan.

I very rarely read any fiction. I love biographies; I read about all kinds of people. I love theology and some philosophy.

I was the first candidate to come out against this war, spoke at every anti-war march.

I was there during the first elections in South Africa. I watched them take down the apartheid flag and raise the new flag.

I won vice president of my student body in high school. That doesn't mean anything.

I'm a patriot in the truest sense of the word.

I've never done anything else in my life other than preach and be an activist. Way before I was known.

I've seen enough things to know that if you just keep on going, if you turn the corner, the sun will be shining.

I've seen too much in life to give up.

If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle, why can't grandma have a constitutional right to health care?

If O.J. had been accused of killing his black wife, you would not have seen the same passion stirred up.

If you can get the proper definition of trouble, then we can find out who the real troublemakers are.

If you play the theatrics too much, you get in the way of your own cause.

It seems some have chosen to ignore or have simply forgotten the big-picture vision promoted by Dr. King and his kin.

James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.

My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today.

National Action Network, the group I founded, has affiliates or chapters in over 40 cities around the country.

One of the reasons I get so much joy out of my own children's childhoods is that I'm having my first childhood myself.

The boxing world is full of all kinds of corruption.

The right wing always mobilizes around constitutional amendments: the right to bear arms, school prayer.

The United States government has the obligation to educate all young people in this country.

The United States has got to adopt a policy of befriending and creating allies around the world.

We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.

We're not anti-police... we're anti-police brutality.

We're not willing to give black leaders second chances because, in most cases, we're not willing to give them first chances.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker, put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start, but where you're going. That's family values.

The dream was not to put one black family in the White House, the dream was to make everything equal in everybody's house.

In order to establish peace, you must have fair justice for everyone.

I've learned how to measure what I say. Al Sharpton in 1986 was trying to be heard. I was a local guy and was like, 'Y'all are ignoring us.'

We are engaged in immediate conversations with the White House on deliberations over a successor whom we hope will continue in the general direction of Attorney General Holder.

The resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder is met with both pride and disappointment by the Civil Rights community. We are proud that he has been the best Attorney General on Civil Rights in U.S. history and disappointed because he leaves at a critical time when we need his continued diligence most.

I've been able to reach from the streets to the suites.

I could take all the cartoons in the tabloid newspapers, but I couldn't take my daughter punching me in the belly and asking why I was so fat. That was my inspiration to lose the weight. And probably the last time anyone hurt my feelings.

As a kid who grew up chubby, I just marveled at the fact that I could be thin.

I always beat the sun up in the morning. It's the secret to why I'm double trouble.

I'm never going to be fat - never again. I'm going to make it easy on my pallbearers.

I actually lost more weight than I am!

I've gone from, you know, being too close to politicians, to being too close to entertainers, and people's father that I'm not.

In New York, you are competing with Times Square lights and all of that, so you've got to be 300 pounds and crazy to get anyone's attention. Then, you can refine yourself. I always knew under those 300 pounds and tracksuits was a refined, slim, dignified man.

In every era going back to Lincoln with Frederick Douglass, presidents talk to those that were leading at that time.