I think it is scary anytime anyone is coming at you asking questions.

I believe that tax dollars used to create a new school of engineering for Florida State University, when there is already a successful partnership in place with Florida A&M University, is counterproductive to increasing engineering graduates.

The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, was put into effect on January 1, 1863, but news of the Proclamation and enforcement did not reach Texas until after the end of the Civil War almost two years later.

A lot of people talk about running for office, but what are you going to do when you get there? It's about service - and there aren't enough hours in the day.

I don't sing about politics or anything like that. I sing about love. That's what I know about.

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.

We have testimony saying, and I think common sense also dictates, that in a failed state like Syria, you don't have any government information, police reports to rely on to vet somebody. So there's no way to do a background check from somebody coming out of Syria. There's no way we can find out whether they're safe or not.

I was with - he wasn't the president then, but - Barack Obama, when he was running, in Washington, during Black Congressional Caucus Weekend, and did a panel about global warming with him. It was almost as if I switched careers for a while, and became a political activist.