A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

The world was beautiful when looked at in this way—without any seeking, so simple, so childlike.

They said a lot of things to each other that night, but nothing that involved words.

I tend to split my activities into fun, income and legacy. The number of things in that finance bucket is pretty few and far between and doesn't consume much time at all.

A nominee [to Supreme Court] must possess the competence, character and temperament to serve on the bench.

In life, we choose whether or not we want to be a winner or a loser.

To know the pain of too much tenderness

We now know that unity, the cornerstone of Canada's greatness and prosperity, is above all a matter of emotion and reason for every citizen.

I think that plain old intellectualism [can be] a more powerful force than the idea of the femme fatale.

At least I'm going into the job with clean hands.

You are just too young to believe that everything is not going to be okay.