Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its best is a grand corrective.

To be a colored man in America ... and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid, greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a philosopher.

The Complex of color...every colored man feels it sooner or later. It gets in the way of his dreams, of his education, of his marriage, of the rearing of his children.

Aviation is poetry ... It's the finest kind of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way of using words.

Biology transcends society.

The old aphorisms are basically sound. First impressions are lasting.

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

Every child should be taught how to think, read and write.

Jesus did not command us to pray for the sick.He commanded us to heal them.

Talent is everywhere, winning attitude is not.

I started my career in a town so small the local clinic was called Fred's Hospital and Grill.

Believe me, you have to have a certain confidence in your powers of descretion to let a dentist loose with a drill in your mouth less than an hour after you've...um...entertained his wife.

January has only one thing to be said for it: it is followed by February. Nothing so well becomes its passing.

Well, we have theatrical parties. It's not me singing. People like to get up and jam on the piano.

Leave home? It's quite a scary thought. I'm not the most independent person and that's the result. When you're always surrounded by people it becomes quite normal.

All these other nations seem to appreciate what I'm doing and they want me to play the furthest out things.