“When trees fall on trees, the topmost tree must first be removed before others. Don't be too concerned about the problems of the past. What matters most is the challenge at hand now!”

“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.”

“The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed in two ways: by a change of life or by a change of conscience.”

“As it stands today we have too many lawyers in government — many of whom are very smart and decent people — but they are not immune from acting like lawyers. Consequently, we have far too much regulatory legislation. Also, what do many lawyers learn in law school? They learn to win by hook or by crook; it doesn’t matter how you fight as long as you win. Imagine a roomful of Democratic and Republican lawyers, each with one overriding goal to win, and this certainly helps one understand the distasteful partisan politics that characterizes Congress today.”

“Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities he does not possess.”

“The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there’s a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under.”

When ideas hang out with influence, income will always emerge.”

“Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man’s supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower,”

“For my grandfather, race wasn’t something you really needed to worry about anymore; if ignorance still held fast in certain locales, it was safe to assume that the rest of the world would be catching up soon.

“For most of us the prayer in Gethsemane is the only model. Removing mountains can wait.”

“Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.”

“To the good God nothing is little because He is so great and we so small- that is why He stoops down and takes the trouble to make those little things for us- to give us a chance to prove our love for Him.”

“If you don't want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.”

“Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

“Persistence is a state of mind, therefore it can be cultivated. Like all states of mind, persistence is based upon definite causes,”