Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.

Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.

I like to go back and read poems that I wrote fifty years ago, twenty years ago, and sometimes they surprise me - I didn't know I knew that then. Or maybe I didn't know it then, and I know more now.

You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise!

It is sad but true that sometimes we need the tragedy to help us to see how human we are and how we are more alike than we are different.

There's racism and sexism and ageism and all sorts of idiocies. But bad news is not news. We've had bad news as a species for a long time. We've had slavery and human sacrifice and the holocaust and brutalities of such measure.

A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.