"You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it."

"We are living in a society that is rapidly losing its capacity for empathy."

"I'm a spiritual gangster with a PhD."

"I'm a Socratic gadfly, a prophetic witness, and a blues-inflected intellectual."

"I feel as if I have been blessed to undergo a transformation from 'gangster' to 'redeemed sinner with gangster proclivities.'"