 All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened. |
| The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerance. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors, and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance. |
| There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth. |
| The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. |
| 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. Topics: Courage |
| Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable. |
| I believe that every person is born with talent. |
| Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. |
| Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends. |
| For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place. |
| How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! |
| I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself. |
| The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind. |
| Achievement brings its own anticlimax. |
| Life loves the liver of it. |
| My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. |
| I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. |
| I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. |
| Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go." |
| The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. |
