We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.

I take the good with the bad, and I try to face them both with as much calm and dignity as I can muster.

A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.

We blacks look for leadership in men and women of such youth and inexperience, as well as poverty of education and character, that it is no wonder that we sometimes seem rudderless.... We see basketball players and pop singers as possible role models, when nothing could be further, in most cases, from their capacities.

Do not feel sorry for me if I am gone.

In America you're conditioned to regard everything as a contest. You have to make the Ten Best Dressed List, win this, win that. It drives me nuts sometimes. Who cares, for Christ's sake?

...I spent many, many hours in...libraries. Libraries became courts of last resort, as it were.