“Other people do not determine your potential.”

“I believe that just as everyone inherits a particular form so does he inherit the particular characteristics and qualities of his progenitors, and to make this admission is to conserve one's energy.”

“If you think of this world as a place simply intended for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place for training and correction and it's not so bad.”

“What will make you great today will never make you great tomorrow! The airplane that Wilbur and Orville Wright invented in 1906 would be seen as a scrap today. It becomes valueless with time.”

“Integrity involves the ability to stand straight when you tell your truth, and still stand straight when the other person comes to talk!”

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream.”

“There is no other way to determine the difference between the will of God and the crafts of satan... Jesus is the way, the truth and the life... The Holy Spirit of God is the Comforter...”

“Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused... But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me; nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not exist. Then why go on making any effort?... How can man fail to see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.”

“I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois’s learning and Baldwin’s love and Langston’s humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art’s redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels.”

“Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.”

“I think growing up in a small town is a good foundation for anyone who decides to enter politics. You get to know people as individuals, not as blocs or members of special interest groups.”

“I look forward to a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose”

“This belief in incarnation is a testimony of man’s lofty spiritual ambition. Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. The endeavour to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realization. This self-realization is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures. But its author surely did not write it to establish that doctrine. The object of the Gita appears to me to be that of showing the most excellent way to attain self-realization.”

“Smile once a while; even if life tastes like bitter bile, just file out your teeth and cheeks and take a mile of sweet smiles... Smile, make it your life's style. Decorate your face with piles of smiles!”

“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.”