Forgiveness is about empowering yourself, rather than empowering your past.

If you think down, you will go down. If you think up, you will go up. You’ll always travel in the direction of your thinking.

Surround yourself with people whose definition of you is not based on your history, but your destiny.

Never make a permanent decision based on a temporary storm.. No matter how raging the billows are today, remind yourself: "This too shall pass!"

God is not preparing the Blessing for YOU, He is preparing YOU for the Blessing

When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, then you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old.

Not everyone will be happy when you begin to better yourself. Those who are for you will not just celebrate in your triumphs, but they will also pray with you through your tribulations.

Real value isn’t in what you own, drive, wear or live. The greater value is found in love and life, health and strength, friends and family!

Your words will tell others what you think. Your actions will tell them what you believe.

God has invested entirely too much in you for you to be comfortable in anything less than you were created to be.

God is a businessman. He is not going to do business with someone who shows no sign of potential return. He invests in people who demonstrate an ability to handle what He has given them.

A man with outward courage dares to die

Think it. Write it. Sell it.

Spiritual force is stronger than material force thoughts rule the world.

At the age of fifteen my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general.

Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.

How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

I am no one to be a purist.

I'm not going to sit here and argue with you. Just PUT THE BLOODY METER ON.

[John Carlos] has spent much of his life since that time as a dedicated human rights advocate and public speaker, and he is out now with a wonderful new text; a memoir, in fact.