The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.

The greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

My soul is too glad and too great to be at heart the enemy of any man

Our nettlesome task is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power.

To be Negro in America is to hope against hope.

Sooner or later, all the peoples of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.

The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin/mistakes causes us to use our minds to rationalize our action.