Indeed optimists rather than defeatists have produced the results for which serious genealogical research is best known.

Your attitude is everything. Believe in yourself and trust your material. To be a successful writer, write every single day where you feel like it or not. Never, never give up, and the world will reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

Most of us prefer to be as quiet as possible about giving, because every time it's publicized that we do something, if it's something of the nature of giving, we'll be doubly besieged, and you really get sick of being always criticized no matter what you do.

Never completely encircle your enemy. Leave him some escape, for he will fight even more desperately if trapped.

The way to succeed is never quit. That's it. But really be humble about it. ... You start out lowly and humble and you carefully try to learn an accretion of little things that help you get there.

Racism is taught in our society, it is not automatic. It is learned behavior toward persons with dissimilar physical characteristics.

In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we came from.