"We are experiencing the sad gangsterization of America — an unbridled grasp at power, wealth and status."

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

"We must never allow despair to become our default."

"To be great in our times too often means to have great prosperity and no moral magnanimity at all."

"I'm a bluesman in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas."