This is said to us, even as this counterfeit president has legalized the Confederate Flag in Mississippi.

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

There is other disturbing facts surround the hideous 911 attacks, which my family and I could see from the third floor bathroom window of our homes!

To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.

If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist.

This is said to us, even as this counterfeit president has legalized the Confederate Flag in Mississippi.

A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other people what to do with their money.

'Griot' is a French word which means, you know, really, literally, 'cry.' You know, like the town crier. You know, they come in and say, you know, 'It's nine o'clock; everything is cool.' You know, 'President Bush is a fool.' I mean, stuff like that just to tell you. But for the kind of, the African thing is called djali.

Howard University shocked me into realizing how desperately sick the Negro could be, how he could be led into self-destruction, and how he would not realize that it was the society that had forced him into a great sickness.

I always liked jazz. And my people liked the old blues, race records and the doo-wop and all that.

I changed my name when we became aware of the African revolution and the whole question of our African roots.

I guess I was the most unbohemian of all bohemians. My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with - ... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things.

I had a little portable typewriter. I call it my Harlem Literary Fellowship.

I had just been in some repressive situations - the black middle-class college scene and the crazy United States Air Force - and so I just felt like getting out of that. I thought, now, that I wanted to be a writer. I had something that I wanted to do, that I was interested in doing, so I wanted to pursue that.

I met Malcolm the month before he was killed. He deeply changed my mind about America.

It seems natural to me that as a writer, you should have some kind of, you know, there should be some kind of projection that you actually have influenced people who are closest to you.

My bohemianism consisted of not wanting to get involved with the stupid stuff that I thought people wanted you to get involved with... namely America... Dwight Eisenhower, McCarthyism and all those great things.

My family came to Newark in the '20s. We've been there a long, long time. My father's name was LeRoi, the French-ified aspect of it, because his first name was Coyette, you see. They come from South Carolina.

The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it.

The black artist's role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.

The major poets of New Jersey have all suffered, whether it's Whitman, who lost his job for 'Leaves of Grass,' or William Carlos Williams, who was called a communist, or Ginsberg, whose 'Howl' was prosecuted, or myself. If you practise poetry the way I think it needs to be done, you're going to put yourself in jeopardy.

The man who buried Malcolm X - my Muslim imam, priest - he, after I got beat up by police... came to me, and he said, 'You don't need this American name.' And I was susceptible to it at the time because, God knows, I had just gotten whipped near to death. So he gave me an Arab name; he gave me the name Amir Barakat.

The poet is someone, I think, who's interested in registering experience immediately or giving you the sense of immediacy and directness.

You can't be an American without being related to other Americans.

You have to start with slavery because those abuses have never been eradicated. You know, people are not living in slums because they voted to. You know, their children are not in jail because they wanted them to. You know, these are the results of a people who have been oppressed and suffer national oppression, you know.

The landscape should belong to the people who see it all the time.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

The President of today is just the postage stamp of tomorrow.

The President forgot to mention the Moon, Mars, and the federal deficit - all of which are sky-high.

The people who voted for President Obama are just beginning to wake up to exactly what they brought in. The 'change' they envisioned is not the 'change' they have gotten.

Given the daunting challenges that we face, it's important that president elect Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one.

It was frightening because it was the first time I had gotten a sense of how serious the problem was. It became clear from his notes that he felt the president himself was involved.

I think President Clinton was probably the brightest President of the 20th century.

You're going to be hearing a lot about one scrappy president.

I didn't say 'former president,' I said 'president,' and I have the constitutional rights according to the constitution, including immunity from prosecution.

The President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound... These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.

George W. Bush is not only a great president; he was a great candidate.

Censure is a limp noodle across the wrist of the president. I think the way we vote on the articles will express the way we feel stronger than any censure vote.

I can't believe George Bush might be president.

I want to share with the American people that President Bush and the Republican majority in just 4 years have borrowed $1.05 trillion from foreign nations. That is selling our country to other nations because of the spending that is going on.

We need people out talking about the President, explaining, agreeing with and praising his actions.

Well, I am a Republican, and I would run as a Republican. And I have a lot of confidence in the Republican Party. I don't have a lot of confidence in the president. I think what's happening to this country is unbelievably bad. We're no longer a respected country.

Parents should watch what their children watch and not use TV as a babysitter. If a show is objectionable they should turn it OFF. They should write the president of the network and tell him they are never going to watch that program again and why.

One of the things about leadership is that you've got to show up. And if you want to be president of the United States you've got to make a case to the American people that Barack Obama needs to be dismissed from his position.

It's been President Clinton's dream that we'll have finally a fully integrated Europe.