“I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it”

“Lord have mercy! Pardon and help us!" he repeated the words that suddenly and unexpectedly sprang to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated those words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew that neither his doubts nor the impossibility of believing with his reason- of which he was conscious- all prevented his appealing to God. It all flew off like dust. To whom should he appeal, if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love, to be?

“Life's battles don't always go To the stronger of faster man, But soon or later the man who wins Is the man who thinks he can!”

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”

“A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.”

“heredity, but personal response is the final determining factor in our lives. And herein lies our area”

“It seems to me that America is constantly reinventing what "America" means.”

“This is the day which the Lord has brought about; we will rejoice and be glad in it. PSALM 118:24” 

“God is concerned with our imaginations, for they in a large measure determine what kind of persons we are to be.”

“[God] alone is perfect. Even His anger is righteous, because it is directed solely against evil.”

“You don’t have to be great to start. But you do have to start to be great.”

“Remember, you become what you think. Think discouraging thoughts, and you’ll get discouraged.”

Prosperity tries the fortunate, adversity the great.

“If you complain you will remain, if you praise you will be raised.”

“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”