The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn't need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder-in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.

We will sometimes have defeats in life but you can have defeats without being defeated, you could fail without being a failure. When you see failure and defeats as merely part of the process to get to when.

The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change.

I want to be representative of my race-the human race. I have a chance to show how kind we can be, how intelligent and generous we can be.

If you are going down a road and don't like what's in front of you, and look behind you and don't like what you see, get off the road. Create a new path!

You can ask goodness in, show it how much you like it, make room for it. And it says, "Oh, I like this place, I think I'll stay here." Which is why people go into one house and say, "I want to take my shoes off." At another house, no matter how beautiful it is, they might say, "Hmm, I can't stay."