“It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction - to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”

“By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension.”

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

“Man himself is helpless to detach himself from the gnawing guilt of a heart weighed down with the guilt of sin. But where man has failed, God has succeeded.”

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.”

“The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.”

“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.”

“Grief is a good thing. It's the way we get through the transitions of life.”

“things in this life can be separated into two categories: Things that are valuable and things that matter.”

“Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”

“Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.”

“Do all you can to make your dreams come true.”

“Forgiveness is one of the most beautiful words in the human vocabulary. How much pain and unhappy consequences could be avoided if we all learned the meaning of this word!”

“What I could not support was "a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics"

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”