I didn't want to be president; I didn't want to be governor; I didn't want to be a congress person. I just wanted to be mayor of the city of Detroit. I lived there my entire life.

Sometimes your gift takes you to a place that your character is not prepared to handle.

My kids want to go back to Detroit everyday, that's their home. They want to be there. But Detroit is going through something that I don't want to be a part of.

My dream in growing up in the city of Detroit was to be Mayor. At the family picnics from the time I was 9-years-old that's what I told people I was going to be. The mayor of the city of Detroit.

I was never fearful or scared. I knew God had me and my wife and children knew it as well so we just marched.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

What I learned in politics (is that) it's a very enslaving place to be. It's hard to be free in politics and if the search for your spirit is to be free, it's hard.

Personality is a person among persons. There is no personality of one man on a desert island.

I heard somebody say that you can't judge a tree by the bark it wears but by the fruit it bears.

I was building the plane while flying it in the first term.

Michigan is very racially separated and the city of Detroit itself is 84 percent African-American and the surrounding suburbs are 86 percent White.

Happiness lies even in ltiny ittle butterflies. You just have to open up your eyes and see where beauty flies to beautify your world lenghtwise.

In order for us to have a future that's exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we're a space-bearing civilization.

Whatever you've accomplished, there's always more to experience.

As the attuning of music arouses emotions in the body to an unusual degree, well that there be choices made as to what the emotions are that are aroused by the character of music.

After telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book schoolmaster and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage.

I am convinced by a sad experience that it is natural to avoid those to whom we have been too much obliged, and that uncommon generosity causes neglect rather than gratitude.

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

You don't find a style. A style finds you

I had a girlfriend before I ever had a boyfriend, but it was just a phase.

I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.