“You can be pitiful, or you can be powerful, but you can't be both”

“The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

“Your attitude colors every aspect of your life. It is like the mind’s paintbrush.”

“God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.”

“When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.”

“I see the signs!” Jessica snapped. “My question was meant to remind you that you should not try to teach me those matters in which I instructed you.” Paul”

“When the family is destroyed, society eventually disintegrates.”

“One of the ingredients of forming good habits and breaking bad ones is focusing on what you want to do and not on what you want to stop doing.”

“We did live in dire poverty. And one of the things that I hated was poverty. Some people hate spiders. Some people hate snakes. I hated poverty. I couldn't stand it. My mother couldn't stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom. What could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of developing their minds so that they control their own lives? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was that wise. Turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week. And with all that spare time read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn't read but we didn't know that. I just hated this. My friends were out having a good time. Her friends would criticize her. My mother didn't care. But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books. Because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere. I could be anybody. I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. And as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you, and what happens to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn't hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me. Made all the difference.” 

“I discovered that night (in his college's student politics) that an audience has a feel to it, and, in the parlance of the theater, that audience and I were together.”

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

“We are so caught up with the affairs of this life we give little attention to eternity.”

“When I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.”

“The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

“Child, that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Oh, the fruit is good, but they loath it ever after.”