[Black people have] learned a lot from being invisible, spit on, dishonored, and devalued. One thing we’ve learned is that when you have been terrorized, it is spiritually empty to terrorize others back.

We are paradoxical. We are beings who are limited and who will always create a world of suffering, and we’re beings who have the capacity to understand that and, in some way, go beyond it.

We have measured a sharp decrease in oxygen in the ocean over the last fifty years. If the ocean has less oxygen, then less is going into the atmosphere as well. I don’t want to mess around with my oxygen-generating system. Ask any astronaut how important your oxygen-generating system is. Shouldn’t this be the highest priority of every man, woman, and child — to be able to breathe?

If you say to me, “I don’t see race when I see you,” that means you’ve just erased a large piece of my experience and identity. That’s a type of violence.

Our economy does not work for all of us. It works for a small handful of elites who are extracting as much wealth from it as they can.

The reason we act when something threatens our family or our neighborhood is because we love these people and places. Maybe it takes a tangible threat to our home environment to make us realize that we really do love the earth.

It’s appalling that one person’s illness would be an opportunity for another to make money. The care of human beings should not be a commodity.

As we divide into affluent and poor enclaves, people’s sense that they share a common destiny withers, replaced by fear, misunderstanding, and class and racial antagonisms.

“You can’t have freedom of religion without free speech. You have to protect all of it: the Bible and the Quran and my right to say, ‘These books are full of fairy tales.’ ”

I was outside of time. Awe, glory, and gratitude are the only words for what I experienced.