"People don't believe or understand that a community can lose hope. You can have a whole community where hopelessness is the norm, where folks don't have faith that things will get better because history and circumstances have proven over 30, 40, or 50 years that things don't get better."

"I graduated from Bowdoin College and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Then I left and took a job teaching really poor inner-city white kids in Boston. It was interesting to me because I'd never been around poor whites before."

"You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.'"

"Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science."

"You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back."

"To build a legacy, one must accept that every failure is just a stepping stone to greatness."

"Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose."

"One of the biggest problems with the modern feminist movement is its failure to bring men along with us."