“Get it 80 percent right and then correct it later.”

“And where love ends, hate begins”

“Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“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.”

“...but most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes. But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious.”

“Don't ever be discouraged with yourself because you have not arrived at success, but instead be pleased that you are pressing toward it.”

“Successful people don’t have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.”

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.”

“I would love it if party labels were not allowed on ballots and people were forced to actually know who they were voting for. Blind loyalty to a party platform is tantamount to relinquishing the important duties of intelligent voting.”

“Repetition or affirmation of orders to your subconscious mind is the only method of voluntary development of the emotion of faith.”

“We owe our children – the most vulnerable citizens in any society – a life free from violence and fear.”

“Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning. It takes great delight in tripping one when success is almost within reach.”

“Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.”

“Belajarlah dari masa lalu, hiduplah untuk masa depan. Yang terpenting adalah tidak berhenti bertanya.”