“The path of self-realisation is the most difficult. -We acquire a sense of worth either by realising our talents, or by keeping busy, or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us - be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions, and the like. Of the three, the path of self-realisation is the most difficult. It is taken when other avenues to a sense of worth are more or less blocked.”

“Don't let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours.”

“sometimes you win, sometimes you learn”

“Am I mad, to see what others do not see, or are they mad who are responsible for all that I am seeing?”

“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.

“Achievement has no color”

“Great vision precedes great achievement.”

“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.” 

“We get angry when others hurt us, both by what they say and what they do. We get angry when we don’t get our own way or our plans and dreams are frustrated. Anger may arise in an instant, erupting like a volcano and raining destruction on everyone in sight. Often, anger simmers just below the surface, sometimes for a lifetime. Like a corrosive acid, this kind of anger eats away at our bodies and souls, yet we may not even be aware of its presence.”

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

“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.” 

“Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.”

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”

“Some people are murderers of their own gifts. They wait and see their dreams suffer from deficiency of actions. The end result is that the world is robbed as they baggage their dead dreams for the cemetery!”

“But I had little knowledge of Marxism, and in political discussions with my communist friends I found myself handicapped by my ignorance of their philosophy. I decided to remedy this.”