I attended a Baptist church as a child and was an avid reader starting with the Bible.

Powerful people cannot afford to educate the people that they oppress, because once you are truly educated, you will not ask for power. You will take it.

White people think when you love yourself you hate them. No, when I love myself they become irrelevant to me.

What I have learned is that a whole lot of people with degrees don't know a damn thing, and a lot of people with no degrees are brilliant.

If we are going to be masters of our destiny, we must be masters of the ideas that influence that destiny.

Most human behavior is controlled by images. Image is a factor in how people look at themselves and what they use to reflect themselves. The control of images is a major factor in world power.

To be black and beautiful means nothing in this world unless we are black and powerful.

It's time for Black people to stop playing the separating game of geography, of where the slave ship put us down. We must concentrate on where the slave ship picked us up.

We will have taken one giant step forward when we face this reality: Powerful people never teach powerless people how to take their power away from them.

Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.

Whoever is in control of the hell in your life, is your devil.

It's laughter that lubricates our irritations, that releases our tensions, that feeds our joy… it’s the laughter that helps keep things warm and joyful even in the midst of pain.

In order to be great, you just have to care. You have to care about your world, community, and equality.

In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

A long, exact, and serious comedy; In every scene some moral let it teach, And, if it can, at once both please and preach.

The flowers that sleep by night, opened their gentle eyes and turned them to the day. The light, creation's mind, was everywhere, and all things owned its power.

The idea is to be healthy, not to wear yourself down or to try and be a twig or change yourself drastically.

I've been sober for 25. And every day I am very grateful that I don't drink.

I don't know any neighborhoods where everyone's walking around in seven-inch heels and perfect makeup.

Your illness is not your identity. Your chemistry is not your character.

I wouldn't play in Minnesota unless my career was at an end and I had to go to Minnesota to play the game.