“No single person can liberate a country. You can only liberate a country if you act as a collective.”

“You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”

“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 question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are they crazy?” –Albert Einstein”

“To doubt is to think, and thought is the only thing in the universe whose existence cannot be denied, because to deny is to think.”

“Improving your life doesn’t have to be about changing everything – it’s about making changes that count.”

“[S]omething inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it anymore. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible.”

“The ability to connect with others begins with understanding the value of people.”

“If you always do what you've always done, then you will always get what you've always gotten.”

“Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.”

“Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give him one of yours. ~” 

“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution.”

“If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not mean to keep. It is true that by living together without marriage they will be guilty (in Christian eyes) of fornication. But one fault is not mended by adding another; unchastity is not improved by adding perjury. The idea that 'being in love' is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a contract or promise at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made.”

“Plan and plant your gifts. Pray and play your role. The harvest is assured when God manifests his anointing power in your passionate actions.”

“Christians should seek after holiness—without which no man shall see the Lord. Let us seek ardently the kind of life that reflects the beauty of Jesus and marks us as being what saints ought to be!”