“No matter how short or long your journey to your accomplishment is, if you don't begin you can't get there. Beginning is difficult, but unavoidable!”

“successful people make right decisions early and manage those decisions daily.”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger. Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!”

“the old and simple truth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so that fewer and fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which the distortion of the truth had been made so plausible.”

“Our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted.”

“Psychologists have correctly said that “when one is truly ready for a thing, it puts in its appearance.”

“America is said to have the highest per capita boredom of any spot on earth! We know that because we have the greatest variety and greatest number of artificial amusements of any country. People have become so empty that they can’t even entertain themselves.”

“You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower-value activities.”

“Since we tend to see ourselves primarily in light of our intentions, which are invisible to others,” said philosopher J. G. Bennett, “while we see others mainly in the light of their actions, which are all that’s visible to us, we have a situation in which misunderstanding and injustice are the order of the day.”

“Why is it that no one understands me and everybody likes me”

“One of Henry Ford’s most outstanding qualities is his habit of reaching decisions quickly and defi­nitely, and changing them slowly. This quality is so pronounced in Mr. Ford, that it has given him the reputation of being obstinate.”

“We must use time creatively - and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.”

“And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour  of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”

“Bridges take people across rivers. Leaders take people across ignorance. With a leader, the destination of a journey is sure.”

“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.”