“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work”

“Position is a poor substitute for influence.”

“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.”

“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. (said of Mahatma Gandhi)”

“The best recommendation is the one you give yourself by rendering superior service – with the right mental attitude.”

“The suicide committed by Sampson was partly determined by the craftiness of Delilah and partly decided by the disobedience of Sampson. Satan uses crafty means to set traps for us, but by our obedience of the laws of God, the traps remain functionless.”

“The nation which indulges toward another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to it animosity or two its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and it's interest.”

“try a democratic environment. Ask your child’s opinions, make them feel as though they matter and their feelings are valued. The same time and energy spent on an argument later can be spent listening to their opinions in the first place. When you take your child’s feelings into consideration, when you ask their opinions, it makes them feel important even if they don’t always get their way.”

“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”

“The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naïve.”

“Some people have said that man has improved . . . [and] that if Christ came back today, He would not be crucified but would be given a glorious reception. Christ does come to us every day in the form of Bibles that we do not read, in the form of churches that we do not attend, in the form of human need that we pass by. I am convinced that if Christ came back today, He would be crucified more quickly than He was two thousand years ago. Sin never improves. Human nature has not changed.”

“Waiters and quitters have a little difference; quitters begin well but do not finish it; waiters do not begin it at all. Don’t be part of their tragedy. Go, make it happen now!”

“The hero is the one with ideas.”

“Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.”

“He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply.