“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.”

“It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defen...”

“He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.”

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the m...”

“Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.”

“I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss”