I am the dream and the hope of the slave

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

Go put your creed into the deed, nor speak with double tongue.

Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams.

I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.

If we lose love and self respect for each other, this is how we finally die.

love builds up the broken walland straigtens the crooked path.love keeps the stars in the firmament and imposes rhythm on te ocean tideseach of us is created of itand i suspecteach of us was created for it

I am convinced that words are things, and we simply don't have the machinery to measure what they are. I believe that words are tangible things...

Thought is the seed of action.

Genius is religious.

Blame is safer than praise.

I think when we don't know what to do it's wise to do nothing. Sit down quietly; quiet our hearts and minds and breathe deeply.

The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

Hitch your wagon to a star.

If you're for the right thing, you do it without thinking.

A foreign country is a point of comparison, where from to judge his own.

I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.

By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell.

I thank God that I've lived long enough to see what I have seen, and I pray that people will continue to do better. We are doing better, it may not seem so, but there was a time when people were lynched in the middle of the street and it was not against the law. We are doing better, but we have so much more to do.

A leader sees greatness in other people. He nor she can be much of a leader if all she sees is herself.

If I wanted to write, I had to be willing to develop a kind of concentration found mostly in people awaiting execution. I had to learn technique and surrender my ignorance.

Life loves the liver of it.