I felt very bad in Washington. . . I didn't like my job, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me, and I was cold and half-hungry, so I wrote a great many poems.

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.

I'm so tired of waiting, aren't you, for the world to become good and beautiful and kind?

The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.

A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.

When a man starts out to build a world, He starts first with himself

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed - Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? ... Or does it explode?

...I wondered if it was blasphemous to tell God that rainbows are kitsch.

Hope blooms when the time is ready.

if it was time that made me lost what we were, then i hate time...

Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

I have been acting for 32 years now and I feel so lucky to be able to have done exactly what I wanted to do.

Do fish get cramps after eating?

I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.

The slowest of us cannot but admit that the world moves.