My loving sister Mary has always shared the pain and pleasure of my heartbeat in a unique and special way. We have sung our sad and warm songs together.

We're all in a test. With or without God, we're in a test.

Clowns don't build institutions, nor do boxers.

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.

What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.

Anytime you turn on your own concept of God, you are no longer a free man. No one needs to put chains on your body, because the chains are on your mind.

After the Moslem Africans lost control over Spain, they began to prey on the Africans further to the south. They destroyed the great independent states in West Africa, and subsequently set Africa up for the Western slave trade and the Arabs were in the slave trade before Islam and they are still in the slave trade.