While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God's creation.
I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.
I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.
Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.
The customs are as formalised as an eighteenth-century minuet, and a child at the race's knee learns the moves and twirls by osmosis and observation.
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Life loves the liver of it.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.
In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are...
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We sho...
In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.
People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest lif...
While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of mans humanity to a man.
The needs of a society determine its ethics, and in the Black American ghettos the hero is that man who is offered only the crumbs from his country's table but by ingenuity and courage is able to take...
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil int...
I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.(Popular misquote of You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.)
Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.