“The essential quality of living life lies simply in the living.”

“The purpose of freedom is to create it for others. Prison desk calendar, written on Robben Island, June 2, 1979” 

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free . . . it expects what never was and never will be.”

“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.”

“We ain't what we oughta be. We ain't what we want to be. We ain't what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain't what we was.”

ilainya meragukan namun tidak mau menggunakan uang itu untuk melindungi pabrik-pabrik kimia yang sangat rapuh di pusat-pusat urban yang utama, menjadi semakin sulit bagi kita untuk meminta negara-negara lain menjaga pabrik-pabrik tenaga nuklir mereka.”

“Those who have committed no faults want no pardon. We are only defending what we deem our indisputable rights.”

“Everything we enjoy is to be treated as a trust that God has placed in our hands. The Bible says, “What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if all you have is from God, why boast as though you have accomplished something on your own?”

“This power became addicting to many elected officials who, instead of going to Washington, DC, for a brief time to represent their constituency, wanted to hold their positions for extended periods of time — even for life. This growing power and the progressive intrusion of government into the lives of the people was so insidious that it went largely undetected.”

“We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

“Showing off is the fool's idea of glory.”

“Piter spoke to Jessica. "I'd thought of binding you by a threat held over your son, but I begin to see that would not have worked. I let emotion cloud reason. Bad policy for a Mentat.”

“No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”

“People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.”

“People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.”