I didn't want to be president I didn't want to be governor I didn't want to be a congress person. I just wanted to be mayor of the city of Detroit. I lived there my entire life.

I heard somebody say that you can't judge a tree by the bark it wears but by the fruit it bears.

Michigan is very racially separated and the city of Detroit itself is 84 percent African-American and the surrounding suburbs are 86 percent White.

Personality is a person among persons. There is no personality of one man on a desert island.

When you are going through something like compaign run nothing happens without Allah's permission. So a lot of the times you just have to surrender to his will and learning how to surrender was a major thing for me, getting me out of the way, surrendering to the will of God.

The job of being president, understanding the particular policies that America has gotten itself into over the past 400 years.

Character issues such as drug abuse are not exclusive to Detroit Public Schools. My reference to substance abuse, not intended to focus on any particular school district, was simply used to illustrate this position.

What is happening in Detroit is not good so I don't even want to be a part of that, but there is something on the other side that I may want to be a part of so I don't know yet.

We do need brothers and sisters to go into elected offices and political offices and do that, but my spirit is telling me something different. Because you are a Democrat or Republican you have to do this but you can't do that and so it's somewhat limiting in what you can actually do and I've done that.

My dream in growing up in the city of Detroit was to be Mayor. At the family picnics from the time I was 9-years-old that's what I told people I was going to be. The mayor of the city of Detroit.

My kids want to go back to Detroit everyday, that's their home. They want to be there. But Detroit is going through something that I don't want to be a part of.

I was never fearful or scared. I knew God had me and my wife and children knew it as well so we just marched.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

What I learned in politics (is that) it's a very enslaving place to be. It's hard to be free in politics and if the search for your spirit is to be free, it's hard.

I know in the Christian church the old ladies use to say what the devil meant for bad God meant for good. So some of the things that I think they went out and tried to be detrimental to my life saved me in a lot of ways.