It is dangerous to be an American Negro male. America has never wanted its Negroes to be men, and does not, generally, treat them as men. It treats them as mascots, pets, or things.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

If you are still breathing, you are not a looser as you still have opportunity to bring change.

The best way to navigate through life is to give up all of our controls.

All the candy corn that was ever made was made in 1911.

If one comes across sometimes as being cold or brusque, it's simply because I'm striving for the best.

I decided as usual that justice lay in the middle - that is to say nowhere.

My body can't put anyone in jeopardy of not making money anymore - my body is just not on the table that way anymore.

Language has no independent existence apart from the people who use it. It is not an end in itself; it is a means to an end of understanding who you are and what society is like.

Of all footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditations, that on death is supreme.

I never watched Friends, maybe because it was written by people straight out of college....The only way to avoid age discrimination in Hollywood is to die young.

I was in Paris last year, where there's a great appreciation of many different aspects of African culture and of black culture. The music... the art... whatever... And I kind of went with that.