Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.

I encourage courtesy. To accept nothing less than courtesy, and to give nothing less than courtesy.

All of my history as an African-American woman, as a Jewish woman, as a Muslim woman. I'm bringing everything I ever knew, and all the stories I've read - everything good, strong, kind and powerful. I bring it all with me into every situation, and I will not allow my life to be minimized by anybody's racism or sexism or ageism.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

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.

The nice thing about HOPE is that you can give it to someone else, someone who needs it even more than you do, and you will find you have not given yours away at all.

I know, that since life is our most precious gift, and as far as we can be absolutely certain, it's given to us to live but once, let us so live we will not regret years of useless virtue, and inertia, and timidity, and ignorance, and in our last moments we can say: 'All my life, all my conscious energies, have been dedicated to the most noble cause in the world, the liberation of the human mind and spirit - beginning with my own'.