Eleanor Holmes Norton

My generation took on political equality. I believe young people, who have graduated into a poor economy, have an incentive to take on much tougher issues of income equality. If they show the leadership they have demonstrated in the last few elections, they can bring changes even greater than my generation achieved.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

I agree that income disparity is the great issue of our time. It is even broader and more difficult than the civil rights issues of the 1960s. The '99 percent' is not just a slogan. The disparity in income has left the middle class with lowered, not rising, income, and the poor unable to reach the middle class.

If diversity is what is a central value in every selective university in the United States, then it ought to be seen as a compelling interest by the Supreme Court.

That line, about half of somebody's supporters being deplorables, was maybe the worst line I've ever heard in politics. You never - even when you're running against a bunch of racists, you never take off against the voters. It was a politics 101 foible.

With children no longer the universally accepted reason for marriage, marriages are going to have to exist on their own merits.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

As commissioner, I will attempt to see that no man is judged by the irrational criteria of race, religion, or national origin. And I assure you, I use the word 'man' in the generic sense, for I mean to see that the principle of nondiscrimination becomes a reality for women as well.

I went to Dunbar High School, recognized as the best high school of the segregated era. The education enabled students from Dunbar to attend the best colleges and universities in the country.

There are not many males, black or white, who wish to get involved with a woman who's committed to her own development.

I am not among those who engage in nostalgia, because I think that locks you into a moment in time without thinking about where you are, what needs to be done now.

I don't for a moment believe that women have suffered the same kind of injustices that blacks have - women have never been enslaved. But still, many of the psychological and economic problems are the same.