Because of my faith and my imagination, I was able to enjoy my childhood, even though it was tough.

We're like a Third World country when it comes to some of our election practices.

Look, Congress has allocated more money to finance the upcoming Iraqi elections than it has for the American elections. There's something wrong with that.

Since Bush has been in office, African-American women have fallen behind in terms of income and wages.

Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor. And perhaps they should understand the role of a community organizer is to help people in distress.

We are not post-racial. And in many ways we don't even know how to have a conversation about being post-racial. Until we get out of that old-school way of thinking about race and opportunity and the ability to transcend some of the past of this country, then we're going to be stuck in the 20th-century conversation about race.

I grew up within New Orleans; my greatest concern is rising water. But I think life is a process of moving items from the 'scared of' to the 'not scared of' list.

I thought acknowledging praise meant you were arrogant, but I've learned that knowing your strengths enables you to make use of them.

I think it's important in a democracy such as ours that we have multiple sources to get news and information and utilize the media only if we want to get a different opinion.

Every member of my family was displaced by Katrina.

On every show that I have been on, I have played myself.

If a critic doesn't think I can act, it's because I'm not acting. That's me - and that's the way I act.

Watching 'Scandal' is a fun and exciting guilty pleasure, which is how I imagine most real scandals start out.

I may not be a trained actor, but I've paid my dues. And I mean that literally. I am a fully dues-paid member of SAG/AFTRA. As a political figure, I've been called a 'card carrying' member of numerous groups that I'm not a member of - and now I'm being called a non-actor when I am literally a card-carrying member of the union for actors.

I am ashamed of some of Democrats in my own party.

We have done a poor job educating people about education. Only when we have clarified that can we talk about how best to achieve it.

TV likes you to talk about the superficial.

If I could have gotten my way at an early age, I would have entered the priesthood, but my mother informed me that I could not become a priest because I was a girl. It really was the biggest blow to my ego, because it was my calling. When she told me I'd have to be a nun, I looked at her and said, 'I'm not following anyone.'

My mama told me it's not what they call you - it's what you answer to.

As a child, I lived through and survived the segregated South. I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be.

As a child, I sat in the back of the bus. I was told, time and time again, that God's potential didn't exist in people like me. I've spent my life fighting to change that. And, from the first day when I met Hillary Clinton, I've known that she's someone who cares just as much and fights just as hard.

It was at the Children's Defense Fund that I met Hillary. I was 21, feisty, and ready to fight. And I remember thinking immediately, 'Here is a woman who doesn't mess around.' Steel in her spine, Hillary didn't want to talk about anything other than how to make children's lives better.

This apology is not just to Bernie Sanders. It is to donors. It is to anyone and everyone that clearly we offended. And the e-mails that were revealed that were hacked.

I talked to the general counsel of the DNC, and he assures me that every step along the way, when we were notified of these issues, that we changed systems, changed procedures, but these hackers are so sophisticated that they changed procedures.

I'm obsessed with the thought of making things happen... Ultimately, I do it because I'm scared. I don't ever, ever, ever want to be poor again.

I put my energy, voice, and spirit into fighting for anybody who wants to speak their voice. I don't care what the right wing, the left wing, or the chicken wing has to say.

A white-boy attitude is 'I must exclude, denigrate, and leave behind.' They don't see it or think about it. It's a culture.

I've had to step up when I was Al Gore's campaign manager. I had to make significant changes as we moved from Washington, D.C. to Tennessee.

We march on toward the realization of the American Dream. We are not diverted by those who would deny opportunity based on what we look like or where we came from or who would deny equality based on who we love.

We march on because all lives matter, not to be judged by the color of their skin.

The grand jury system - not just in Ferguson, but nationwide - needs a hard look. Millions feel that officers who are trigger-happy are handed a license to shoot - based not on facts, but on stereotypes the officers carry.

Before Hillary-bashing became its own thing, she was subjected to the standard-issue woman-bashing used on every powerful woman in Washington.

Women in Washington - and in positions of power anywhere - should be subjected to the same criticisms and held to the same standards as men. That does not include the assumption that any successful woman has attained her position through flattery, feminine wiles, or her ability to provide maternal comfort to a more powerful man.

Due process policies such as tenure are put in place to protect good teachers from being fired without cause. They aren't there to protect 'bad' teachers.

Over the years, I've worked for and alongside the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association. That's because I am proud of our public school teachers - including my niece who teaches down in Louisiana - just as I am proud of our nation's education system.

If you're a Supreme Court justice, the American people have elevated you to one of the highest offices in the land out of the goodness of their heart and out of deference to your legal wisdom. You get a lifetime appointment, limitless prestige, a great office, and what I have to assume is a very comfortable chair.

As Democrats, we believe in giving every eligible citizen the opportunity to vote - whether it's early because they can't take off work on Election Day or absentee because they might have plans to be out of town.

Our democracy relies on participation, and we've never done better by excluding folks.

As Americans, we are proud that we are a country that people run to, not from.

Obama has a strong record on immigration enforcement, outdoing both Republican and Democratic predecessors. He has deported over 1 million immigrants, focusing on those with criminal records. As documented by many nonpartisan sources, by 2011, Obama had reduced illegal immigration crossings to net zero.

Congressional opposition to immigration reform or emergency funds doesn't stem from any philosophical objections or differences of principle. It stems from a calculated, petty, selfish rejection of anything Obama proposes.

America is inundated with polls. We need a term for being swamped with polls. I would say 'poll-arized,' but that's already in use to describe our political divisions.

I think that five, 10, 50 years down the road, we'll be honoring President Barack Obama for ending two wars, stopping the economic hemorrhage and, yes, reducing the number of uninsured. And the polls won't matter.

Our public portrayal of fathers has shifted during my life. TV fathers have 'evolved' from real people like Sheriff Andy Taylor, Beaver's dad Ward Cleaver and Heathcliff 'Cliff' Huxtable, to cartoon dads like Homer Simpson and Seth MacFarlane's caricatures in 'American Dad!' and 'Family Guy.'

Today's fathers are having a rough go being kindly portrayed in the media. Thank God, we do we have President Barack Obama for a national model. He both dotes on and takes a firm loving hand to our first-family daughters.

If you're a girl, you're always Daddy's little girl. You're vulnerable, no matter how worldly or sophisticated or strong you'd become along the way. My dad Lionel let me know how proud he was, even as he kept me from being too big for my britches.

Hillary Clinton, because she's the Democrats' presumptive 2016 front-runner, has become the target du jour. Frankly, I don't know how public figures get through it.

Students of color who attended integrated schools in the decades immediately following Brown were more likely to graduate high school, go to college, earn higher wages, live healthier lifestyles, and not have a criminal record than their peers in segregated schools.

School integration did not come to be the day after the Brown ruling was issued. Progress took years, and it took passion, strength, and courage from a large group of committed individuals.

The biggest problem for the Republican Party has never been its primary calendar, its campaign tactics, or a lack of trainings. The party's biggest problem is what it believes, what it says, and how it governs.