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I champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally - though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.

I'm not one that believes that affirmative action should be based on one's skin color or one's gender, I think it should be done based on one's need, because I think if you are from a poor white community, I think that poor white kid needs a scholarship just as badly as a poor black kid.

Though it's impossible for us to legislate one's thoughts and feelings, we still need things like affirmative action in place because without measures like it, people in charge would not have, sadly, enough impetus to do, as cliched as it sounds, the right thing.

I have been a long and strong supporter of civil rights in my whole career. I led the fight to get the voting rights act re-enacted. I have been a strong supporter of affirmative action. I believe in it strongly.

I don't know what this definition of affirmative action is for some.

Affirmative action is an effort to include every aspect of society in the decision making.

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.