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.

You only are free when you realize you belong no place - you belong every place - no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great.

I'm convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I come as one, but stand as 10,000.

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.

Fighting for one's freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.