“To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.”

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.”

“Every person born into the family of God has the same redemption.” 

“I firmly believe God continues to answer the prayers of His people even after He has taken them to heaven. Never forget that God isn’t bound by time the way we are. We see only the present moment; God sees everything. We see only part of what He is doing; He sees it all.”

“You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want”

“You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be. And one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid…. You refuse to do it because you want to live longer…. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, or shoot at you or bomb your house; so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.”

“I guess one of the great agonies of life is that we are constantly trying to finish that which is unfinishable”

“Don’t predict the condition of the entire day by the state of the morning. You don’t judge a book by its cover. A cloudy morning is no guarantee for a rainy day!”

“The harbour of influence is richer in the cemeteries where people are buried with their music on their tongues unsung. Don't leave your potentials untouched!”

“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.”

“You can’t take the team to the next level when you haven’t mastered the skills it takes to succeed on a personal level. It just doesn’t happen.”

“believed that God is always a good God. Facing difficulties, he lost his job. His home was about to be taken and all seemed hopeless. Braxton prayed”

“We can't help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”

“Cartoonist Henri Arnold said, “The wise man questions himself, the fool others.”

“Do not expect something for nothing. Be willing to give an equivalent value for all that you desire, and include in your plans a definite provision for doing so.”