I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.

A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

Go be who you were meant to be, explore your mind, understand you are free.

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals!

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

The only true immortality is when you don't care if you die. The moment you stop giving credence to gain is when you become invulnerable to pain.

I really would like to work with kids if I was not a model.

The proud man can learn humility, but he will be proud of it.

I find it refreshing to unplug from it for a while. You kind of forget how deeply you get embedded in it.

The passive receiving of Christ is the process by which a spiritual principle of grace is generated in the will of man.