Quotes from Tavis Smiley

I don't want the Obama era to be more about symbolism than substance when it comes to black people. I love him, but I love black people even more.

I still think in this country, and this might surprise you, the one thing that George Bush said as president that I do agree with, I love that phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child.

Struggling to stay in the middle class, and I love that. That's me and my dad and my family.

I love my cross-sectioned, cross-cultural audience. Some of them are doing better than the average guy, but my audience has always been people who are struggling to stay in the middle class.

Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child.

I'm always fascinated by people from the Midwest, because it is so different than Hollywood, who discover at some point that they want to be in Hollywood.

We give you the facts. I told you information is power - knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts.

When it comes to the president, we have to respect him, we have to protect him, and we have to correct him. And in my career, since he'd been on the national stage at least, I've had - I've always respected the president.

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.

The old African proverb says, 'The ax forgets; the tree remembers.' I saw how horrifically it injured us to identify with our oppressors. If we were to keep our souls whole, we couldn't afford to forget. We had to remember.

All he could think of was how all people require attention. All people require respect. All people require acknowledgment. All people require love.

Since time immemorial wise people have been saying that all comparisons are odious. When we compare, we set up a winner-loser dynamic. If my crisis is greater than yours, then yours is belittled and insignificant. I say that's nonsense. Each crisis has its own power, its own unique reality.

The draft," he shouts, "is white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people. The draft must end: not tomorrow, not next week, but today.

Poverty is not the stepchild of the Great Recession; poverty has always been a part of American life.

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Doc

The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.

White America has told Doc: We have created a space for you. We have allowed you to be the leader of your people for your cause. We have become comfortable seeing you in this space. This space has resulted in your receiving a Nobel Peace Prize. But that leadership and prize do not allow you to address issues outside your space.

True democracy focuses on the public interest; it defends the common good and protects its citizens - especially the weak and the vulnerable. We maintain that no democracy can survive without the powerful notions of compassion and public service. The level of wealth inequality in this country has gotten so far out of hand, the quantity of compassion so diminished, that the very future of democracy is at stake." ? & Cornel West

We - again, the, the, the, the bastardization and the demonization over the last few years of teachers and of unions and of collective bargaining, that is not the answer.

In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school.

When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?