Take the blinders from your visiontake the padding from your earsand confess you’ve heard me crying and admit you’ve seen my tears.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I’m telling lies.I say,It’s in the reach of my armsThe span...

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an...

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...

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

I love the melodies in the Old Testament, how preachers highlight them when they read from the Scripture. But I was influenced forever by the New Testament. I love the Beatitudes, informing us that the...

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

If you’re serious, you really understand that it’s important that you laugh as much as possible and admit that you’re the funniest person you ever met. You have to laugh. Admit that you’re funny. Otherwise,...

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn’t speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn’t speak: I had been molested,...

Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no...

Don’t let the man bring you down.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

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

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it’s right, it’s easy. It’s the other way round, too. If it’s slovenly written, then it’s hard to read. It doesn’t give the reader what the careful...

Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

This a a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.

Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.

I couldn’t tell fact from fiction,Or if the dream was trueMy only sure predictionIn this world was you.I’d touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And...

When things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep

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.

You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, ‘I forgive. I’m finished with it.’

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

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

It’s very important to know the neighbor next door and the people down the street and the people in another race.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with...

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

Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads...

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

n” word are like poison, whether you take poison from a vial or pour it into Bavarian crystal, it is still poison.

Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk...

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

The only thing is, people have to develop courage. It is most important of all the virtues. Because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtues consistently.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t laugh.

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.