No teacher has the right to cure a child of making noises on a drum. The only curing that should be practiced is the curing of unhappiness.

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The Grace of God is glue.

If the emotions are free the intellect will look after itself

God gave us mouths that close and ears that don't... that should tell us something.

We are where centuries only count as seconds, and after a thousand lives, our eyes begin to open.

My nemesis - my downfall, if you will - was relationships, and trying to fulfill them.

Free children are not easily influenced; the absence of fear accounts for this phenomenon. Indeed, the absence of fear is the finest thing that can happen to a child.

There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.

Don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with.

We need above all to learn again to believe in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.

We are not afraid of what we think we are afraid of . . . we are afraid of what we think.

Success is a result not an action.

Feel happy and joyful like a fresh blooming spring flower.

He took her hand without question, without fear, and he never regretted it.

I set my sights upon becoming the kind of artist who would make a contribution to art history.

See the opportunities for adventures, not the constraints that get in the way.

I'm a Pisces but I'd rather be a killa whale.

I think that's my nature, to want to bring people together rather than to try to bombard them into agreement.

What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

Bite your tongue. Get a cinder in your eye. When you feel good, you feel nothing.

Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era.