Listen carefully to what country people call mother wit. In those homely sayings are couched the collective wisdom of generations.

Each of us has a responsibility for being alive: one responsibility to creation, of which we are a part, another to the creator a debt we repay by trying to extend our areas of comprehension.

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise.

Freedom is never free.

Words are things. You must be careful, careful about calling people out of their names, using racial pejoratives and sexual pejoratives and all that ignorance. Don’t do that. Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.