The woman who bore me is no longer alive, but I seem to be her daughter in increasingly profound ways.

The ultimate expression of generosity is not in giving of what you have, but in giving of who you are.

Faced with what seems like an impossible task, a group of folks will do well to remember the African proverb: When spider webs unite they can tie up a lion.

What you give ought to be in direct relationship to what you've received. If you have been blessed with a great deal, then you have a lot of giving to do.

An education that teaches you to understand something about the world has done only half of the assignment. The other half is to teach you to do something about making the world a better place.

You cannot fully understand your own life without knowing and thinking beyond your life, your own neighborhood, and even your own nation.

While it is true that without a vision the people perish, it is doubly true that without action the people and their vision perish as well.

Show me someone content with mediocrity and I'll show you someone destined for failure.

The content of the curriculum should never exclude the realities of the very students who must intellectually wrestle with it. When students study all worlds except their own, they are miseducated.

If folks can learn to be racist, then they can learn to be anti racist. If being sexist ain't genetic, then, dad gum, people can learn about gender equality.

racism is alive and doing too well in America.

A single recipe holds countless stories.

Life wants you to touch, taste and see the grandeur of the world's unfathomable variety.

Strictly has just given me a real zest for life. Life is so short. We should all grasp it.

Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, "I knew he loved me when de didn't come in my mouth.

We think the Puritans always dressed in black and white, which they didn't. They loved very bright colors. And there were other differences in perceptions that gave one a very different view of them.

I understand why people get desensitized and roll their eyes when they hear a protest song, or even a politician making some flowery speech. It doesn't really change anything.

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.

Any man who is a man may not, in honor, submit to threats or violence. But many men who are not cowards are simply unprepared for the fact of human savagery.

If you got everything you wanted, you wouldn't have everything you need.

One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought