“Look for the valleys, the green places, and fly through them. There will always be a way through.”

“Everybody looks at their poop.”

“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.”

“Followers tell you what you want to hear. Leaders tell you what you need to hear.”

“The book of Proverbs warns us over and over again about negative associations. Constant exposure to wrong attitudes and wrong values will eventually take its toll in our lives. It is always easier to pull someone down than it is to lift him up. What kind of friends should you have? The kind who bring out the best in you, who lift you up, who encourage you, who make you a better person.”

“Billions of dreams die off every year. I believe yours will not be part of that proportion if only you are ready to shape them!”

“When you have a well developed body and you're confident, you see people bending your way, wanting to be on your side, wanting to do things for you.”

“Good leaders motivate others by their listening skills. We are to: avoid prejudicial first impressions; become less self-centered; withhold initial criticism; stay calm; listen with empathy; be active listeners; clarify what we hear; and recognize the healing power of listening. Then we are to act on what we hear”

“All shall be done, but it may be harder than you think.”

“Someday your children will leave; you can’t hold on to them or control them forever, nor should you.”

“We are going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the Almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. So however difficult it is during this period, however difficult it is to continue to live with the agony and the continued existence of racism, however difficult it is to live amidst the constant hurt, the constant insult and the constant disrespect, I can still sing we shall overcome. We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. We shall overcome because Carlisle is right. "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne."   Yet that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right.  "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all of God's children all over this nation - black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual, "Free at Last, Free at Last, Thank God Almighty, We are Free At Last.”

“I believe Success is achieved by ordinary people with Extraordinary Determination.” 

“The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.”

“Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.”

“Si nuestras oraciones no son contestadas, bien puede ser porque no estamos haciendo lo que Dios, con claridad, nos ha dicho que hagamos.”