Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.
People fall forward to success.
Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.
The highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion.
The people who turn out best are those people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but scattered along life's pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
It was to carry the American democratic journey beyond these failings that Black citizens and civil rights workers risked unemployment, violence and death.
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
There is no marvel in a woman learning to speak, but there would be in teaching her to hold her tongue.
Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.
A question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others, crazy?
Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
In many people it is already an impertinence to say 'I'.
No mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
It’s extraordinary how self-obsessed human beings are. There is so much more out there than what connects to us.
